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All he could hear in the tent was the sound of two idiots sleeping.
Natsu was sprawled out, one arm flung over his face, the other dangling uselessly off the edge of his bedroll. Happy had somehow migrated from his own spot and was now curled into the crook of Natsu's neck, the two of them locked in together with zero regard for personal space.
Gray was not asleep.
He lay on his back with one arm folded behind his head. The fire outside was dying. He could feel the cold creeping in at the edges, not enough to bother him, but it was the kind of cold that made the world feel very still, and empty, and so far away from home.
Five months.
He turned the number over in his mind. Five months since they'd left Magnolia again. Five months since he'd seen anyone from the guild. Five months of just Team Natsu and the long, strange road of the 100 Year Quest unspooling ahead of them, further than any of them had properly reckoned.
Five months since he'd last seen Juvia.
He closed his eyes.
Don't think about her, some rational part of him warned. But he did it anyway.
It was almost funny, he thought, how much it still caught him off guard. How much he was missing her. You'd think after a few weeks he'd have found some equilibrium, some sensible balance of I miss her, but I'll see her when I'm done, but it didn't seem to work like that. If anything it had gotten worse over time.
His jaw tightened.
He missed her laugh. That was the one that got to him first tonight, for some reason. The way it came out sometimes surprised, like she hadn't meant to let this bright, helpless sound she made when something genuinely caught her off guard. When she laughed at his jokes even when they weren't funny, which he used to find a little embarrassing, but he'd give a lot right now to hear even that version. He'd take any version.
He rolled his shoulder against the bedroll and exhaled hard through his nose in frustration.
He missed her hair.
That one was particularly stupid and he knew it. He lay there in the dark thinking about the stupidity of it while also being completely unable to stop.
But it was true, he missed the way it felt when she was close enough to him that the soft waves would brush his bare shoulder, that deep blue softness that smelled faintly of saltwater.
It wasn't in reach now. It was an uncountable number of miles away, and there wasn't a single thing he could do about that, and that fact was deeply irritating.
He turned onto his side. Then his back. Then his side again.
Natsu made a noise in his sleep, something indignant and muffled, and Happy shifted, mumbled "aye, it's a big fish,"and went quiet again.
Gray stared at the wall of the tent and felt the irritation sitting low in his chest. It wasn't a useful feeling. It wasn't pointed at anything he could punch to make go away.
He just wanted to see her and he couldn't, and that was it, that was the whole stupid problem, and somehow that simplicity made it worse rather than better.
He pressed the heel of his hand against his sternum for a moment, like he could push the awful empty feeling back down.
He thought about the things he hadn't said to her yet. That was its own specific category of ache, not what he missed about her, but what was still waiting, still unfinished. She'd been telling him for years, in every possible way, how she felt and he had stood there and received it and said nothing, done nothing, kept his stupid mouth shut and his walls up and told himself it was too complicated, it wasn't the right time, he needed to figure himself out first.
Idiot, he thought, and he meant himself.
He was figuring himself out now. That was, technically, the point of all this.
He thought about the forest they'd crossed two weeks back, the one where the trees grew so tall their canopy completely blocked the sky and they walked through a world of green underwater light. He'd thought about her the whole way through and had nowhere to put it, no way to say hey, look at this, you'd love this, he just had to carry it around with him and file it under things to tell her eventually.
That hypothetical folder was getting thick. He wanted to sit down and go through the whole thing with her, every stupid detail she'd want to hear about.
And he wanted to hear what she'd been up to, too. Whether she was eating properly and sleeping enough. What she had been crafting or creating. Was she trying new lunch and dinner recipes for him to try? He wanted to know all of it. Every mundane, ordinary thing she had been up to.
He wanted, in the very simplest terms, to just see her. Just to have her, standing there, smiling at him. That wonderful and hopelessly warm smile she gave him, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
He wanted it so much it made him grit his teeth.
He rolled onto his back again and shoved a hand through his hair, staring hard at the ceiling.
She's fine, he told himself, with slightly more aggression than the thought warranted. This isn't permanent. Stop acting like it is.
The talking-to didn't especially help.
He sat upright, unable to control the frustration growing in his body that it was starting to come out physically.
There wasn't anything to do with it, which was its own specific problem. He couldn't go anywhere. He couldn't do anything except sit in the dark in a tent that smelled like campfire smoke and unwashed dragon slayer while his two idiot companions slept like logs while he stewed in feelings he had no outlet for. He was a man who solved problems by hitting them. This was not a problem he could hit.
He dropped his elbows to his knees and pressed his face into his hands for a moment.
Why am I even doing here? He thought, not for the first time. But he knew the answer.
The 100 Year Quest was a real reason, an important reason, and he didn't regret it. But underneath that, running alongside it was his reason and he had been missing that reason very badly. He'd wanted to be worth it, more confident that he diddeserve her love.
He'd spent years being someone who didn't say the things he meant, who kept people at arm's length because it felt safer, who had looked at Juvia, patient, devoted, still-there-after-everything Juvia and kept choosing not to choose, and called it complicated when really it was just fear.
He wanted to go back as someone who could finally stop doing that.
He wanted to stand in front of her and actually say it. I love you too. Four simple words. He'd been carrying them around for longer than he wanted to admit and all they needed was for him to open his mouth and let them out, and he was going to do that, properly, when he got home. He wanted to deserve the look he knew she'd get on her face when he did.
When he'd left, she'd been trying so hard not to cry. He'd seen it, the way she held herself very carefully, the brightness in her eyes that she was actively refusing to let fall. And he'd said, because he was an idiot and he hadn't known what else to do to make her stop looking like that: "Absence makes the heart grow stronger, right?"
He'd meant it as a comfort for her, something to hold onto.
He hadn't expected it to be this true.
He'd been so used to having her close. Years of her simply being there and turning up in the most unexpected places, always with some reason or excuse that fooled exactly no one, always there and he'd taken it for granted, he could see that now with the horrendous clarity of distance. He'd gotten so accustomed to the shape of her presence that the space where she wasn't there felt wrong in a way that was hard to put into words.
He missed her more than he would ever be able to explain to another living person, including her.
He couldn't wait to see her again.
Gray let his eyes close.
Not permanent, he reminded himself, in the dark. You know where she is and shes safe.
He let himself sit with that for a while. The image of Juvia safe and sound at the guild, somewhere under the same sky, probably looking after his things whether he'd asked her to or not. Probably talking to him in her head when things happened that she wanted to tell him.
And then, because he was already this far into his thoughts and there was no one was awake to see it, he let himself think about coming home.
He knew exactly what would happen. He knew her. The moment she saw him walk through those guild hall doors she wouldn't hesitate. She'd cross the room before he'd fully gotten through the door and she'd throw herself into his arms, the way she always had, the way he'd always let her even when he'd pretended he hadn't wanted her to. Except when the time came he wouldn't pretend. That time he was going to catch her properly, hold her and not let go.
And then, the part that made his chest feel tight in a way that had nothing to do with missing her and everything to do with finally, finally, he'd tell her.
He'd already rehearsed it more times than he'd ever admit out loud. Not some big speech. Just I love you, Juvia. And he'd watch her face do that thing it did, that trying-not-to-cry thing and this time instead of standing there like an idiot not knowing what to do with himself, he'd kiss her.
God, he couldn't wait to kiss her.
The thought still had the power to make him feel slightly short-winded, which was embarrassing, but he was operating in the privacy of his own head at whatever miserable hour of the night it was, so he gave himself a pass.
He wanted to give her everything she'd been waiting for. All of it. Every single thing she'd ever wanted from him that he'd been too locked-up and stupid to offer.
He wanted to make her feel like what she was the only girl in the world, the person he would walk back from the end of the world for, the girl who had never once asked him to prove anything but was getting proof anyway the moment he got home.
He couldn't wait.
I'm going to come back, he thought, looking at the canvas ceiling and pretending she could somehow hear his thoughts. And when I do, I'm going to make you mine.