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The first time he'd tried, they were tipsy.
Cana had declared it a "welcome home, for real this time" party, which was really just an excuse for the guild to drink through half its liquor stock on a Tuesday, and by the time the night wound down Gray and Juvia had ended up wedged together on the same bench, shoulders bumping, and faces warm from more than just the firelight.
Juvia was giggly in a way she only got after a few too many and laughing at things he said that weren't even that funny. Especially if Gray said it.
Gray liked her like this. Liked the way she leaned into him without overthinking it, how much she wanted to be close to him.
And he wanted to be close to her too.
So when she tipped her head back to look up at him, cheeks pink, eyes soft and glassy, he figured, screw it. Now was as good a time as any.
He leaned in.
Juvia let out a startled little giggle, planted her palm flat against his face, and shoved.
"Ah, Juvia needs another drink!" Her voice pitched high, bright, entirely unconvincing. She was on her feet and weaving toward the bar before he'd even processed being pushed away from her.
Gray sat there for a second, hand coming up to touch his own cheek where hers had just been, and let out a short laugh under his breath, more disbelief than anything.
Drunk enough to melt into his side. Not drunk enough to let him kiss her yet. Figures.
He told himself it was nothing. He was just back home, everyone was still adjusting.
He could wait.
The second time, he tried to be smarter about it. No leaning in suddenly, no cornering her, just a walk. Simple and low stakes.
They would walk along the river and they would be alone and he would ask to kiss her again. Properly this time.
"Hey." He caught her at the request board, hands in his pockets, doing his best to look like he hadn't spent the last ten minutes working up to asking her. "You wanna go for a walk? River path's nice this time of year."
Juvia flinched and blushed at his sudden attention before she snatched a job flyer off the board so fast it tore at the corner.
"Juvia would love to, but… ah, she has a job! An urgent one! Very far away, possibly! She'll see you later!"
She was already backing toward the door, torn flyer clutched to her chest like a shield, when she collided with a barstool and fled.
Gray looked down at the board. The flyer she'd grabbed was for a lost cat in Magnolia's park.
He didn't say anything.
He just exhaled through his nose, long and slow, and told himself, again, that he could wait for her signal.
The third time was the one that got to him.
They were running late for a guild meeting, Erza making a new rule about punctuality nobody asked for, and Gray reached out without thinking and caught Juvia's hand as they hurried down the corridor.
It wasn't a big gesture. It wasn't supposed to be, but her fingers were warm and small inside his, and something about the simple, easy rightness of it made him slow down, made him look at her with a hope he usually kept better hidden than this.
Juvia felt his hand tighten. Felt him looking at her and turned, her breathing a little too fast.
They had stopped for a second and she looked at him with wide-eyes as he tugged her arm to a halt. They were already leat, he reasoned with himself, another few minues would be fine.
So he leaned in to her again while taking a quick glance at her lips and it looked like she leaned in a little too for a second. When she looked down at his lips it made his breath catch in throat with the anticipation.
She spun around so fast her hair whipped his arm. "We're late, Gray-sama! Let's go!"
Her face was scarlet all the way to her ears, and she towed him down the hall at a near-run, refusing to meet his eyes but also not letting go of his hand, and Gray let himself be dragged along wondering, not for the first time, what exactly he was doing wrong with her.
It went on like that for two weeks.
A pattern he could set a clock to: closeness, panic, escape, apology issued later in the form of an extra-large helping at dinner or a too-bright "good morning, Gray-sama!" that tried too hard to sound normal.
He wasn't angry.
He didn't think he had the right to be, not after everything he'd put her through with waiting for him, all the times he'd been the one to flinch away first. But there was another emotion creeping up in him, a mild panic that he was too late.
He found her on the guild's back balcony one evening, alone, watching the sky go orange over the rooftops. He stood beside her, not too close, and for a while neither of them said anything.
"Can I ask you something?" He finally said, low.
Juvia nodded, though she didn't look at him and he could see her cheeks starting to go red.
"Did I miss my chance with you or something?"
Her head turned so fast he heard her neck crack. "What? No, of course not, Juvia loves you, Gray-sama! Why would you think that?"
"Then, why do you keep running?" He kept his voice gentle, but he didn't look away from her. "Every time I get close. Every time I try to," he stopped, trying not be be embarrassed about saying it out loud. "You don't want me to kiss you again? I know it wasn't, you know, the most romantic thing to happen in a fight but…"
"That's not," Juvia's hands twisted on the stone railing. "That's not true. Juvia would love for you to kiss her, she thinks about it all the time. She wants it so badly, she's wanted it for so long, but," the words came faster now, tumbling over each other, her face going redder with every one. Gray couldn't help but think how absolutely adorable her little rambling was. "But what if Juvia does it wrong? What if she's not good at it, or what if you kiss her and get disappointed? Juvia has thought about this moment for years and now that it's a real possibility with us, she doesn't know what to do with her hands, or her face, or even if she was to use tongue or not. The last time we kissed was to save our lives and while it's only CPR it was incredibly romantic for the reason we were saving each other and she doesn't know if — "
Gray cut her off the only way he could think to in that moment.
He kissed her.
His hands came up to frame her face, thumbs brushing her cheekbones, gentle enough that she could have pulled away if she'd wanted to. She made a small, startled sound against his mouth, but she didn't pull away and rested two shaking fists against his chest.
She kissed him back and Gray felt the tension in his own shoulders finally let go at the sensation.
Finally.
He smiled against her lips. "I don't know," he murmured, barely an centimeter from her mouth. "You feel like a pretty good kisser to me."
Juvia's eyes flew open. He watched panic flicker across her face, watched her start to lean back and this time he didn't let her get far. His hand slid to the back of her neck and the other around her waist, keeping her close, and he pressed his forehead to hers.
"Please, Juvia."
Two words. Nothing like the confident, easy way he would tease her across the guild hall, this was something desperate, an ache he needed to fill with her.
He didn't mean to literally beg her for it, but he couldn't keep it all in anymore. God, all he wanted in the world was to kiss her again and again and again.
She went still.
Her heart was slamming so hard he could feel it through his own chest, but she didn't run. She let her eyes fall shut and leaned her head up to let him kiss her again, slower this time, and he laughed softly against her mouth.
"You're shaking," he said, not unkindly. There was warmth in it, fond and entirely without judgment as he brought her in closer to him, almost swaying them both a little.
"Juvia is not," she took a deep breath. "...She might be a little nervous."
"'S okay." He kissed the corner of her mouth, then slowly across the line of her jaw, he had nowhere else in the world to be. "We'll go slow."
He kissed her again. And again, patient and unbothered by the way her hands fisted in his shirt or the way her breath kept catching, until the racing of her heart began to settle into something calmer, something that matched the easy rhythm of his own.
Her hands uncurled, sliding up to rest against his chest instead of gripping fistfuls of fabric and the feeling of her soft touch made his own heart start racing a little with how much it meant to him to have her so close.
By the time he pulled back, just far enough to look at her, she was leaning into him without meaning to, cheek against his palm, her eyes soft and a little dazed.
"See?" Gray brushed his thumb along her cheekbone, smiling wide at her. "You're a natural."
Juvia buried her burning face in his shoulder, and for once, she didn't run anywhere at all.