Chapter Text
Lucy had, on some level, gotten used to her friends breaking into her apartment. She didn’t dare question Erza about how she got in, Natsu generally used the window, and—well, she’d once accused Gray of making a copy of her key with his ice magic, but he’d just deadpanned that her door was pretty much always unlocked. Which, alright, yes, fair, she did have a bad habit of that, but come on.
Anyway, point being, she was still startled when it happened, but a lot less startled than she used to be. Which was why she only squeaked a little bit when she came back from the guild hall to find Gray sprawled out on her couch, asleep.
Hey, at least he was clothed this time.
Pointedly, she put her grocery bags heavily on her desk, making a loud thump, and was slightly gratified when he startled awake.
“Don’t you have a couch at home?” She asked, as he blinked around, looking entirely too at home.
“Your couch is comfier.” He yawned the words, sitting up and scrubbing a hand through his hair.
“Not my fault you bought cheap furniture.” She said primly.
“Just wait until Natsu burns through all your upholstery three times. You’ll end up with cheap furniture too.”
“Then don’t let him sleep on your couch! Problem solved!”
“Uh-huh. How’s that working out for you?” Gray looked amused and pointed to a distinctly singed mark in the fabric of Lucy’s sofa that she hadn’t noticed before.
“…Motherfucker.”
Gray laughed and stood up, stretching. “Want help putting those groceries away?”
Lucy was still scowling at the burned mark on her couch. “Yeah, sure. If you’re going to freeload, you may as well help out.”
He took one of the grocery bags off the desk and moved into the kitchen while she inspected the damage to the couch fabric, and she was relieved to see that it was superficial. She could probably just cover it up by embroidering a heart into the cushion.
But really, Natsu?
“How the hell does he even own furniture himself?” She grumbled, moving to follow Gray into the kitchen.
“He doesn’t. Haven’t you been to his place? That’s why he’s always crashing at other people’s houses. I mean he’s got some stuff, his place isn’t awful, but it’s a little thin on the soft surfaces department.” Gray held up a bunch of celery. “You making soup? Don’t tell me you eat this stuff as a snack.”
Lucy flushed. “It’s healthy!”
“Yeah, and it tastes like angry water. Just because something’s chewable, doesn’t make it an actual food.”
Lucy pointed at him threateningly with a carrot she’d pulled out of her own bag. “You don’t get to judge my food choices, mister.”
“Well someone has to, are you secretly a rabbit?”
“Ha-ha.”
“Oh, here we go. I knew it.” Gray triumphantly pulled out the box of pastries from the bottom of his grocery bag. “I mean it’s still not exactly protein, but I’m glad you’re eating something aside from crunchy nothing.”
“They’re called vegetables, Gray. You should try them sometime.”
“Hey, I eat vegetables, I just don’t eat them raw, recreationally, like some kind of maniac.”
Lucy rolled her eyes and threw a bell pepper at him. He caught it, smirking, and put it away with the rest of the vegetables.
“Why are you even here, Gray? I thought you were out on a job, I haven’t seen you in days. You looking for clothes help again?”
Just like that, his easy manner was gone. He didn’t exactly freeze up, but he tensed, and Lucy had gone on enough jobs with him to be extremely familiar with the way he held himself when he was uncomfortable. She had no idea why, though. For a few months now, she’d been helping him out trying to come up with outfits that he could only take off if he meant to do it. The brainstorming had, at times, gotten a bit silly (buckles. So many buckles), but she was pretty sure it had been an amusing bonding experience for both of them: she’d never seen Gray laugh as hard as he had when she’d pulled out the first corset she’d had him try on, so she had no idea why bringing it up now would make him tense up.
“I wanted to ask you for advice, but…not about that.”
“About what, then?” Lucy turned to fully face him, leaning back against the counter. “Given how well the clothes advice has been going, I’d have thought you’d be a little hesitant to ask me for advice again. I had no idea how highly you thought of my input.”
“Yeah. Well, I do.”
“So, what’s it about?”
Gray hesitated. “Juvia.” Catching a glimpse of Lucy’s grin, he scowled. “Don’t you start. I have a hard enough time with the rest of the guild on my ass about it.”
“You want dating advice on top of outfit advice? Just imagine how scandalized Juvia would be if she knew you were asking other women about her—“
“Look, will you just listen to me?” Gray sounded frustrated in a way Lucy rarely heard from him outside of particularly heated arguments with Natsu. “I’m just—I don’t really know how to say what I mean, but fuck, Lucy, I’m trying, so could you cut it out with the jokes for a minute?”
Lucy blinked at him, taken aback. Gray didn’t usually snap like that, certainly not at her. “Sorry, I didn’t realize…”
“Just forget it, ok?” Gray headed out of the kitchen, grabbing his coat off the back of the couch and making for the door, shaking his head. “This was a bad idea.” He muttered that last part, and Lucy didn’t really think he meant for her to hear it at all, but she followed him and caught his wrist as he moved towards the door, and he stopped.
“Gray, hold on. I’m sorry. Let’s just…start over, ok? What was it you wanted to ask, about Juvia?”
“It’s…kind of stupid.” His shoulders were hunched, and he wasn’t looking at her, but she studied him for a second anyway. Whatever it was, it was bothering him. A lot, if he’d reacted like that to a joke about it.
“Probably not, if you’re this stressed about it. Sit tight, I’ll find us something to drink. You want coffee? Tea?”
“I’m not really a hot drinks person.”
“Wine?”
He hesitated, and she smiled slightly. Bingo. “All I’ve got is a bottle of white, and it’s not chilled, but I imagine you can probably help with that.”
“…Yeah, alright.”
“And how do you feel about leftover pad thai? I don’t know about you, but if I drink on an empty stomach I’m probably not going to be great for advice.”
“Sure. But you could just say you were hungry, like a normal person. It’s probably because of all those damn vegetables.” Gray followed her to the kitchen and accepted the bottle of wine from her, holding it between both hands to chill it. “You have a corkscrew?”
“Yeah, check the drawer by the sink.” Lucy busied herself getting their food hot, and by the time she brought the plates to the table, Gray had the wine open and was looking curiously into her cabinets.
“You know, you really seem like the kind of person who’d have wine glasses.” He reached in and pulled out a pair of small jam jars she’d saved to use as glasses, giving her a wry look. “Every time the team’s come over, you’ve gotten out those big fancy-ass water glasses, and I don’t know whether to be flattered about that being your special-occasion glassware or concerned about your critical thinking letting Natsu use something that breakable.”
Lucy flushed. “Now who’s making jokes?” She asked. For a second she was concerned he’d shut down again, but he just shook his head fondly and brought the jars to the table, pouring them both wine and sliding hers over to her.
“I’ve got the same damn jars. Now shut up and eat your pad thai.” He said mildly, and seated himself across from her.
The mood had loosened somewhat, just the way Lucy was hoping it would with food, and their silence as they ate was comfortable, but Gray was still clearly tense, and she tried not to watch him too obviously as he picked at the pad thai and drank the wine at a slightly faster than casual pace. Eventually Lucy realized he wasn’t going to try to bring it back up again on his own, but she didn’t prompt him until after he’d finished eating and had helped her with the dishes. She’d wanted to give him every opportunity to try again, but she didn’t want to let him duck out after eating, either, so she poured more wine and sat back down, and after a moment of hesitation, Gray followed suit.
“So…what’s going on with Juvia?”
He fixed her with a look, and Lucy sighed slightly.
“Ok, stupid question. What’s going on with Juvia that I don’t know about?”
“What isn’t going on with Juvia?” He deflected, but after a moment he ducked his head, running a hand distractedly through his hair. “I still don’t know how the hell to say any of this. I’m not sure there is a good way to say any of it.”
“Well, you came to me for advice, so maybe let’s start there. What is it you need advice on?”
Gray was silent for a moment. “I need advice on how to get her to…stop. Without…” He trailed off. “Look, I care about her. I want her to be happy. And she’s doing a lot better than she was, but—“ He gave Lucy a slightly helpless look. “She spends a lot of her time not ok. And I get that. I think more than most people in the guild. I like her and I want her to be ok, but I can’t—“ He cut himself off again, and Lucy stayed silent, letting him grapple with his words for a moment. “I don’t do that. I don’t feel the way she feels. About anyone. I never have. I don’t know if it’s because of…everything that happened with me in my past, or what, but I just don’t. And—she likes me, I’m not an idiot and it’s not like she’s subtle. But I’m not trying to—to play hard to get, or string her along, or play with her emotions, I just…what she wants isn’t how I…do things. The people I’m closest to are family. You, Natsu, Erza, everyone—hell, even Lyon—and—sure, Juvia’s in that. For everyone else, that’s fine, that’s enough. But for her—you know how many people have told me to give her a straight answer?”
To Lucy’s surprise, he wasn’t asking rhetorically, and looked up at her, waiting for an answer. She shook her head. “No. Have you…given her one?”
“I don’t really know what my straight answer is, but yeah. I’ve been as straight with her as I can be, I’ve asked her to back off and told her I’m not interested, and I’ve tried to be clear, but the thing is, I do care about her, so I don’t know, maybe I’m giving her mixed signals. I want to be friends with her. I want to be able to be close with her like I am with you guys. We work well together in a team, and I actually like working with her. But every time I even look at her, I make everything worse, and she gets weirder about me, she seems to think I’m looking to be convinced, and then Elfman and Gajeel give me crap for stringing her along. And maybe I am!” Gray rubbed his forehead with both hands like he had a migraine.
“It would be so much easier if I hated her. But I get where she’s coming from, a lot of the time. And I do consider her family, like you guys. But the thing she wants from me? Doesn’t look like what she wants, if it’s coming from me. It looks like what I have with you guys. And I’ve tried to explain that to her, but she…” He hesitated. “She just won’t take no for an answer. And it’s kind of gotten to the point where it’s like. Should I just say yes? I mean what the hell’s even the point of saying no? She pretty much tells everyone we’re together already, she’s obnoxious to any of my other friends she considers love rivals, she’s perfectly fine to be around when she’s not being crazy, and it would make her happy. I want her to be happy. All of that probably improves if I just agree to be with her, so why the hell am I still even putting her off? Everyone assumes we’ll end up together, it practically feels like procrastination at this point. And then there’s…” He stopped, fidgeting awkwardly. “I probably shouldn’t even tell you this part.”
Lucy didn’t think her eyebrows could get any higher, but they did when he said that. She tried hard to school her face, but what the hell? How the hell had she missed this? Sure, all of them had gotten weird stalkers at one point or another, with the possible exception of Natsu, but Gray’s stalker was a member of the guild. And a hell of a lot less fickle than any of the ones Lucy had experience with herself. She’d never had someone stalk her to the point where she was seriously considering spending the rest of her life with them just to get them to lay off, and not only was Gray apparently at that point, it sounded like he had been for some time. And what the hell did he mean about things he shouldn’t tell her??
“Gray, did…did something happen?”
Gray swallowed, but to her surprise, he answered. “Yeah.” He poured himself more wine, mostly, Lucy suspected, so he had something to do with his hands, although that didn’t slow down the speed at which he drank it. “That last job gramps sent us out on, up in the mountains? Things got…weird. Weirder.” He was fidgeting again. “No point dancing around it, makes me sound like an asshole any way you cut it. We had sex.”
“What??” Lucy didn’t mean to ask so loudly, but given the way Gray flinched, the word came out more of a yelp than anything else.
“Jeez, Lucy, speak up, I think some of the neighbors didn’t hear you.” Gray’s voice didn’t match the tone of his words, and he just looked unhappy, his shoulders hunched as though waiting for her to yell more. And she was definitely thinking about it. “It wasn’t my idea, ok?”
“Wait, but—what do you mean it wasn’t your idea? Did you tell her no?”
“Of course I told her no. Didn’t I just tell you how well that works? I say no, and she hears ‘I want you to convince me.’ And I guess this time she did.” Catching Lucy’s look, he put up his hands, as if trying to wave away the conclusions he could see her drawing. “Look, it wasn’t—I know how bad that sounds. It was a mistake—both of our mistakes. But having made that mistake—now I’m the asshole who had sex with her but won’t date her. And now that it’s happened once, any of those lines I’ve tried to draw in the sand to get her to back off are just—I mean, at this point they’re hypocritical at best, at worst they’re just gone.”
Lucy took a very deep breath, trying to rein in her emotions. Really buried the lede there, Gray. She thought. “Gray, I’m gonna need a little more detail on what happened on the job. Not asking for a blow-by-blow, but what the hell do you mean you said no and she ‘convinced’ you?”
“Jesus, Lucy. Really? Fine. I think someone maybe talked to her, ahead of time. We weren’t the only two on that job, but everyone got split up and we happened to end up together overnight, alone. And I know why we didn’t go find the others, we would have had to scale a mountain in the rain, but I think maybe the others didn’t come to find us for a whole different reason. I think people are tired of me putting her off, and set it up so she’d have a chance to change my mind, in hopes that I’d get over myself and just date her already. And she took her job convincing me of that very seriously.”
Lucy’s mind was whirling. Who was on that job?? “But you ended up having sex—you told her no and she just…kept going?”
“Sure. But I also could have tried a whole lot harder to make her stop, and I really didn’t.”
“Did she give you any choice at all though? Aside from literally fighting her off?”
“Look, it wasn’t as bad as that, ok?” Gray shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “If I’d been more sure, I would have stopped her. And it wasn’t even bad sex—if it had just been for fun, I might have even agreed to it, but it was Juvia, which meant there were enough strings attached that I should have put a hard stop to it. It’s not like I was a totally unwilling participant for the whole thing, I had sex with her, she didn’t just have sex at me. And it was a stupid thing to let her do. I knew that, and I let her do it anyway. She was just so goddamn insistent, and we were gonna be stuck there for a while regardless, and I didn’t want to risk her running off rather than waiting out the night in the cave if I pushed her away too hard, and we were sort of in a lake, so it was kind of…there wasn’t a really great way to get her to back off without it turning into a full-on fight, and honestly I wasn’t sure I’d win if it came to that.” He wouldn’t meet Lucy’s eyes, keeping his gaze on a knot in the wood of her kitchen table. “She misunderstood, I think, pretty badly. And I didn’t help matters when I ended up going along with it. I just…I’m still not sure what to do, where Juvia’s concerned. Every move I make seems to end up being the wrong one. I should have stopped her, and I didn’t, and I don’t know where that leaves us now. Sure, I told her to stop at the beginning, but we were all snuggled up together when I woke up in the morning, and again, it’s not like I just took it. I’ve been avoiding the guild hall for over a week, but sooner or later this is all gonna blow up in my face. And on top of all of that, why am I even bothering at this point? It’d probably be easier to just go along with it, and she’s really not that bad, so why the hell am I trying so hard to keep any of this from happening?”
Lucy was of the opinion that maybe it already had blown up in his face. What Gray was describing was…well, if it wasn’t rape, it was perilously close to it. And sure, maybe it had stemmed from a miscommunication, and maybe Gray wasn’t sure what he wanted, but Lucy was damn sure that it was time for people to stop trying to push him about it. But he was also right: if he couldn’t tell Juvia no effectively, and the whole guild was hounding him to give her a straight answer, and he still wanted Juvia in his life, that left him with relatively few options beyond saying yes. No wonder he was looking for advice. Lucy just wished she had some to give him. He didn’t need advice at this point, and he didn’t need to say yes: he needed people on his side, because if a no from him didn’t count, he needed backup. If what he was saying was true—and Lucy had never known Gray to lie about something like this—then their fellow guild members had set him up to give Juvia a chance. And no matter what you called what had happened afterwards, it hadn’t been all that consensual. Lucy didn’t think Juvia would have crossed that line without encouragement, and if the encouragement hadn’t come from Gray, that meant it had come from other people in the guild. This whole thing was a goddamn mess, and now Gray was drinking wine about it in her kitchen like they were having a casual conversation, but he was avoiding the guild hall, where—by his own admission—the people who were most important to him were.
Lucy rubbed her face and took the wine bottle herself, pouring herself more and buying herself time to think.
“You know how bad it sounds that she wouldn’t stop, right?” She asked, and Gray winced.
“Yeah, I’m aware. I spend most of my time half-naked, Lucy, I’m pretty familiar with people getting the wrong idea about it, and it’s not like no one’s gotten pushy before. But it’s one thing if it’s a stranger. Hell, it’s easier with strangers, sometimes I even take them up on it. I get how this whole choice thing is supposed to work. But I actually care about Juvia. Just…not the way she wants me to. And I don’t know how to get that across to her. Every time I try to talk to her, it just…” He blew out a long breath. “It’s hard enough to explain any of this to begin with, but she goes totally off the rails if I so much as use the word ‘us.’ Kinda makes it hard to have a deep conversation when the person you’re talking to gets so flustered that they stop listening about six words in.”
“Yeah, I can…see how that would be a problem.”
“And then on the other side of it, she’s got my back. I mean, sure, pretty aggressively, but…” He was back to fidgeting again, and Lucy felt a small surge of worry. “Look, most of the people who’ve cared that much about me, specifically, have ended up dead. I can’t get it out of my head that she’s going to die for me, and I—I don’t want that. I’m pretty sure it’s nearly already happened at least once, and if I let her stay close to me, at least I can keep that from happening.” He sighed, letting his face fall into his hands. “People keep telling me to stop trying to have it both ways, and I guess that’s the whole problem. I just need to decide.”
Lucy chewed her lip. “Ok, hold that thought. Putting aside the way things are now, what exactly is it you do want? Maybe we can work backwards from there.”
Gray snorted into his hands. “Maybe. Thing is, I don’t actually want things to be that different than they are now. The only thing I really want is for Juvia—and the whole guild, really—to drop the whole…expectation thing. I’m ok working on teams with her, and—honestly if she really did just want sex, fine, if it makes her happy. Sometimes it seems like she’s actually just horny as hell, and that I could probably handle, although I don’t think I could ever really match her level—but I need everyone to stop looking at me like I’m an asshole just because I don’t do relationships. I never have. It’s not like it’s about her, specifically, she’s just the only person who’s gotten anywhere near this intense about it. And now everyone in the guild thinks I’m some kind of heartless monster, because she’s in love with me. I’d let her be a hell of a lot closer to me if it didn’t make everything worse every time I did it. But I’m probably never going to feel that way about her, and if that’s such a huge letdown to everybody, fine, but could they at least fucking drop it, then? Instead, I’m just ending up on everyone’s bad side because of how I’m treating her—and I’m not trying to treat her like anything, I’m just trying to keep her safe and ok and ideally out of my bed, since she’d read way too much into it—and apparently that’s too big of an ask. I want her to be able to rely on me—she’s already out here letting me rely on her, and I owe her for that. But if I can’t be what she needs from me, and I can’t convince her to stop expecting that from me, and the way I care for her isn’t enough, then what the hell am I supposed to do?”
Lucy hated that she’d missed this. All of this, apparently. Sure, she’d heard people muttering about the way Gray treated Juvia, and she’d noticed that he parsed out his affection around Juvia much more carefully than he did with anyone else, but she hadn’t really followed that line of thinking. Juvia had her own set of issues, of course she did, but Gray’s really had him over a barrel about this. Lucy didn’t even think he realized how telling it was that he’d apparently let Juvia have sex with him in part because he was worried she’d run off if he didn’t let her, and in part because he didn’t want to fight her. He was terrified of anyone getting hurt because of him—Lucy knew that, but she hadn’t realized how it extended to how he treated Juvia. Keeping her at arms-length hadn’t worked, because she cared about him just the same, and in Gray’s mind, that meant her safety was at risk because of him. Letting her get closer had backfired, because as afraid as he was that she’d die for him, letting her close made her think she was getting through to him and that she could convince him to have romantic feelings for her—feelings that Gray apparently simply didn’t get. And on top of that, Gray was a caring person, so inevitably his words or actions broke through the chilly front he was putting up, because he did care about her. They were close. And they’d be closer still if Gray wasn’t so tangled up in the expectations Juvia had for him. Lucy had spent years on the receiving end of the devotion Gray showed his friends, and she considered him one of her closest friends because of it. Gray loved his friends harder than anyone Lucy had ever met. But for Juvia, who was hanging on every micro-signal he gave her…
From the outside, it was easy to mistake their dynamic as Gray taking her affection for granted or giving her mixed signals, but the fact of the matter was, he was floundering badly trying to keep her from getting hurt, and Lucy could see why. Juvia’s emotions ran so strongly that it actually wasn’t entirely unreasonable of Gray to be as worried about her mental state as he was about her physical well-being. They were friends, and that meant he did love her. Just not how she wanted him to. And damn near the whole guild had decided to back Juvia on this, which had left Gray on his own trying to navigate a difficult situation with someone who he couldn’t even have a serious conversation with without risking some sort of meltdown. In some ways, it was incredibly unsurprising that things had gotten this bad. If anything, it was just surprising it hadn’t happened sooner.
Also, Gray looked terrible. Lucy had only been a little surprised when he’d turned up at her apartment, after she hadn’t seen him for a week, but now that she knew why she hadn’t seen him, she felt a lot worse about it. Gray’s world revolved around his friends. Regardless of Juvia’s issues or the way she let Gray rely on her otherwise, it was out of line for things to have gotten to the point where she was driving a wedge between him and his guild. To say nothing of her essentially forcing sex on him with the blessing of their fellow guildmates. Gray deserved better than that from all his friends.
“There’s gotta be some way to do this.” Lucy muttered. “There’s no reason this should have to be so goddamn difficult.”
Gray snorted. “See, that’s what I’ve been saying. But who the hell can I even go to for advice about this, aside from you? Elfman and Gajeel practically dragged the two of us on that job together with a whole lotta winking, and Erza would just say to be straight with her, which—yeah, obviously, but that really only works if you can actually talk to the person. I’ve tried to talk to her. And I’d say maybe it would go better coming from you because she’d actually listen to what you were saying, except—first of all, I wouldn’t ask that of you, and second, she’d get totally the wrong idea and end up convinced I was trying to date you instead. Which leaves me with what, writing a letter? Feels like kind of a dick thing to do after having sex with her and then avoiding her for a week.”
“…Have you seen her at all this week?”
“No. She came by my apartment and waited for a while in the hallway—she brought baked goods—but I just pretended I wasn’t home. I know it’s childish as hell to avoid her like this, but what the hell can I say to her? We both screwed up.” Gray rubbed tiredly at his face, and Lucy bit her lip to keep in her comment that she thought Juvia had screwed up a bit more catastrophically than Gray possibly could have on this. “I’ll be honest, there’s a pretty good chance she followed me here and is waiting outside someplace to ambush me when I leave—or worse, saw me come in here and totally lost her cool and ran off someplace. It’s just…it’s gotten out of hand, and I don’t know how to reel it back in. She deserves more than just me avoiding her, it’s probably the worst thing I could have done, but I screwed up so bad I don’t know how to even have a conversation with her right now. You think she’d take it well if I apologized for having sex with her? Or asked her to apologize to me?”
Lucy winced. “Yeah, probably not.” She hesitated. “I think maybe we should take it to the guild.”
Gray blanched. “I thought I’d gone through the whole list of terrible ideas, Lucy, how’d you come up with a new one?”
“No, listen. You said you didn’t think she’d come up with the idea on her own, right? Like it kind of seemed like other members of the guild had set you two up and maybe talked to her?”
Gray nodded reluctantly. “If you’re suggesting I explain to Elfman that she had sex with me and I didn’t want her to, I think you may have lost the plot, Lucy. You really think he’ll have anything to say about that aside from telling me to man up?”
“…I guess not. Was it just Gajeel and Elfman, though? I feel like she wouldn’t take their relationship advice seriously enough to cross a line like that if they told her to.”
Gray shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea, Lucy. She could have talked to Erza, for all I know, and just totally misunderstood something Erza said. She stalks me, but that doesn’t go both ways, it’s not like I’m listening in on her conversations. I don’t keep track of who she talks to or who she goes on jobs with—I try not to, actually, because I don’t want her to get the wrong idea. So no, I’ve got no clue who she talked to. Wendy was on that job, but I’m fairly goddamn certain it wasn’t her idea.”
“Was it just those three?”
“No, Cana and Levy were there too.”
That was an unusual team for Gray to be on. And if Gajeel and Elfman had strong-armed him into it, Lucy could understand why Gray was suspicious about the timing. But Levy? To say nothing of Wendy, who’d surely been oblivious to the whole thing.
“Was there a reason they wanted you and Juvia on the job?”
Gray finally broke his staring contest with the table and gave her a flat look. “You mean besides the obvious?”
“I’m just trying to figure out if the whole thing was pretense.”
“Not all of it, I don’t think. I mean, they didn’t need us, but it was a big dark guild up in the mountains. Levy went because there was some kind of code up there that they needed to translate, and Gajeel went because Levy did. The rest of us got roped in because Wendy decided to go too, so they wanted to make sure there was some redundancy on our side, power-wise, just to make sure nothing happened to her.”
“And Juvia?”
“Was basically pelting me with cupcakes in the guild hall when Gajeel and Elfman came to drag me into it, so they invited her along too.”
Lucy sighed. It wasn’t a whole lot to go on, and it could be coincidence. There wasn’t a whole lot of reason to think that the guild was complicit at all, except that they’d let the environment around Gray and Juvia build to the point where Juvia thought it was ok to force sex on Gray, and Gray didn’t think he had much recourse aside from learning to be ok with that. They’d all looked the other way when she pushed past his boundaries and made him uncomfortable in the guild hall, so why would Juvia think there was anything wrong with continuing to do it when they were alone? Why would Gray? And why would either one of them think that the guild would have Gray’s back now, when they hadn’t in all the little boundary-overstepping ways that had led up to this?
“Hey…Gray? I’m sorry.”
He looked startled. “What are you sorry for?”
“Even if no one set you guys up, this didn’t just happen. You’ve always had my back, you shouldn’t have to second-guess if we’ve got yours. I’m sorry I didn’t realize how screwed-up things had gotten, it’s not like it wasn’t happening right in front of us.”
Gray just stared at her, seemingly unsure what to say, and as bad as Lucy knew he was with open declarations of affection, it only made her feel worse. He deserved to know his friends were looking out for him. He deserved to have his friends looking out for him. He shouldn’t have found himself facing this alone, certainly not to the point that had led to what had happened on his last job. Gray’s protective streak was a mile wide and high—where had theirs been for him?
“…Thanks.” He finally muttered. “It’s not like it’s your fault, though. We’re all grown-ass adults, it’s not like it should be that hard to get her to back off, it’s just that it’s…complicated.”
“It shouldn’t have to be.”
“No, it shouldn’t.” He agreed. “But sometimes things just suck. Honestly, this sucks a lot less than some things, it’s just so damn tangled up I haven’t got the first clue how to set it right.”
Lucy let out a long breath. “I’ll ask around the guild.” Seeing him opening his mouth and anticipating his refusal, she hurried on. “Not like that. I just want to know what everyone thinks is going on. Then we can figure out what the hell to do afterwards. If everyone’s got a twisted idea of what’s even going on between you two, it might be less of a miscommunication between you and Juvia than it is between you, Juvia, and the guild. Remember how screwed-up Gajeel used to be? If Juvia’s used to taking social cues from her guild, hers might be a little messed up. And if everyone in Fairy Tail misunderstands what’s going on, she might be relying more on them for signals than she’s relying on you. Maybe that’s why you haven’t been able to make any headway.”
Gray’s mouth was an unhappy slash. “Maybe. Do we have to get the whole guild involved, though? I don’t like my family knowing about my sex life in the best of times.”
“I mean they definitely don’t have to know everything, I just want to make sure they’re on the same page as you. None of us would have let this stand this long if we’d seen it for what it was.”
Gray buried his face tiredly in his hands. “Fine. But do me a favor and leave Natsu out of it, alright? The last thing I need is for that moron to tap into the rumor mill and make everything worse.”
“Deal. Actually, you want me to grab a job for you? If you’re avoiding the guild hall, it might be more pleasant than holing up in your apartment.”
“You just want me off your couch.”
“Hey, at least you don’t burn holes in it. But maybe you, Natsu, and Erza can head out on a long job while I try to work out what the hell’s going on here?”
“If you can find a job long enough, sure. I’ll feel less like an asshole avoiding Juvia if I’m actually out doing something. Not sure it actually makes me less of an asshole, but I’ll feel better about it.”
“Hey.” Lucy reached across the table and shoved his shoulder lightly. “You’re not an asshole, ok? Not about this. I’ll dig up a job for you guys so you can get out of town for a little bit and clear your head.”
“Thanks, Lucy. I owe you one.”
No, you don’t. Lucy thought, watching the tired slope of his shoulders. I think this one’s on us.