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He achieved consciousness, but kept his eyes firmly shut. The light was far too bright for comfort, especially after a night that he’d barely survived. Without opening the sealed lids he tried to figure out where he’d landed. He was lying on something soft that smelled like lavender in the sun; his head was pounding like Natsu was inside throwing a tantrum; his tongue was dry sandpaper while the inside of his mouth tasted like a garbage barge; and in the background he heard someone moving quietly, but not making an effort to keep their steps muffled. So, someplace safe, and probably not his apartment, since it didn’t smell this good, and he didn’t remember bringing anyone home from the guild with him last night.
Ugh!
He wanted to keep sleeping but there was an urgent need suddenly making itself known. The awareness of pressure in his bladder was almost too much to bear. He’d have to get up. Gingerly he sat up and moved his feet over the edge of the bed.
“Sleeping beauty has finally woken up,” a familiar and slightly petulant female voice said.
She said it a bit too loud if you asked Gray, but no one was asking his opinion about this.
“Uh, yeah,” he grunted as he cracked one eye open to try and look for the bathroom.
Too bright! He closed his eye quickly, then gingerly pried both eyes open with sheer determination. Murder glared down at him. He tried to defuse the situation by asking an innocent enough question.
“Um, Lucy? Why are you mopping at this time of the morning?”
Her eyes narrowed as her mouth went tight into a line. Whoops, wrong question buddy boy, you’ve managed to make her angry with only one question. That was Lucy’s patented I-have-something-to-say-and-you’re-going-to-hear-it expression. He was in for it now.
“Why am I mopping at this time of the morning?” she repeated in almost a whisper.
“Why am I mopping at this time of the morning?” again a little louder as she let the handle tilt against the side of the bucket and put both hands on her hips.
“Why am I,” she took a step nearer to Gray pointing at herself,
“MOPPING,” she pointed toward the object,
“at this time in the MORNING?” her hands were spread wide, palms up toward the sky, as her voice rose to fill the entirety of the space between the two people.
Gray stared at the furious girl. “Uh, yeah?” He tried to put an innocent and mildly curious expression on his face. Judging by Lucy’s reaction he’d missed the mark completely.
“I’m mopping Gray because there is a LOT of water all over my apartment from some drunken ice mage, who was three sheets to the wind, deciding he needed to ‘get creative’ at three am and build the best Fairy Tail indoor ice rink in history!”
Gray just stood slack jawed for a moment until he remembered the reason he had gotten out of bed in the first place.
“Oh come on, Lucy. There couldn’t have been that much water,” he grumbled as he moved to the bathroom. “And I wasn’t that drunk,” he added before closing the door.
Lucy was waiting beside the door as soon as it opened.
“You were sooooooo drunk!” she declared. “You were...were… hammered, loaded, sloshed, blasted, smashed, pickled, plastered, cockeyed, oiled, gassed, blitzed, tanked, bombed, trashed!”
She pushed him in the direction of the kitchen table as she continued her tirade.
“Gray Fullbuster, you were wrecked, inebriated, wiped out, impaired, crocked, bombed, well-done, and chemically inconvenienced.”
She pointed at a chair.
The hung-over ice mage sat down, put his arms on the table and rested his aching head there, while she went to retrieve something from the cupboard.
“You, my besotted friend, were stewed, beery, befuddled, dopey, and stupefied.”
She laid a full glass of water and two white tablets in front of the head resting on the table. She shook his shoulder to get his attention. Once she had it, she indicated the medication while her words never stopped flowing.
“You were beyond tipsey! You were blotto, fried, bleary-eyed, wasted, defcon 1, laced, and shit-faced.”
Orange juice and crackers appeared in front of Gray next, like magic. He started eating them, grateful that his stomach didn’t seem to be rebelling too much.
“You were having to hold onto the grass to keep from falling off the earth,” she stated.
“Lucy there’s no grass to hold onto in here,” Gray groaned.
“At one point there was!” she said with a meaningful look.
Gray was surprised to hear that. What point would there be to summon an icy lawn in a battle?
“Gray you were so far gone,” she said with an amused smile. “You were juiced, pie-eyed, potted, ripped, sozzled, crapulous, spinning without moving, soused, stoned, bibulous, and tiddly.”
She reached for a book that was lying open on her desk, the perks of a small apartment where practically everything was within arm’s reach. She ran her finger down one side and seemed to find the passage she was looking for.
“You were: annihilated, blind, boozy, canned, drunkened, fried, intoxicated, jagged up, lit, looped, loose, sottish, soused, squiffed, stinking, tight, and….” she turned the page, “maudlin, strung out, debauched, dissipated, dissolute, and, my favorite word in this list, dipsomaniacal.”
“So you’re saying that basically I was...”
“You were Cana,” Lucy deadpanned.
Gray started to laugh but had to stop abruptly. His being Cana sucked, but at least he had a guardian angel looking out for him.
The morning sun cast a halo around Lucy’s head and Gray smiled at the iconic picture before him. Though most guardian angels probably weren’t mopping while muttering about what kind of an idiot knocks himself out using Ice Make Floor.