Archive of Our Own

Rain came to Magnolia after the fight, and it kept coming for most of the week after. A dull sky that soaked the cobblestones and darkened the guild's outer walls, the kind of weather the guild members knew when to worry because it always seemed to follow Juvia when her feelings ran deep enough.

Juvia cried for three days straight before she let anyone see it.

She hadn't meant to hide it at all, really, except that the first night she'd barely made it back to her dorm before the sobs took over completely, ugly and gasping, and left her curled on the floor of her own room with her back against the door because she couldn't summon the energy to make it all the way to the bed.

She lay there for what felt like hours, stinging eyes, replaying the whole street scene on an endless loop with Gray's face, twisted with anger pointed to her; the moment Natsu's arm had closed around her to keep the two of them apart.

When had the two of ever needed to be apart?

She'd told herself she'd feel better by morning but the first light through her curtains had only made the hollow feeling worse. She'd told herself the same thing the next morning, and the one after that, staying curled in bed long past the hour she'd normally have been up and dressed, and by the third day the lie had worn thin enough that even she couldn't keep believing it herself.

It was Levy who finally found her, knocking on her door with a plate of something warm from the guild kitchen, with a gentle, persistent knocking that meant she wasn't leaving until someone answered.

Juvia had opened the door still crying, too exhausted to bother hiding it anymore, hair a tangled mess, eyes swollen nearly shut, and Levy's face had crumpled with such immediate worry that it had nearly started her off again right there in the doorway.

"Oh, Juvia." Levy didn't wait for an invitation, just stepped inside and set the plate down on the nearest surface before pulling her into a hug that smelled faintly of old books and the guild-kitchen. "It's okay, I'm here now. Just breathe, alright?"

Gajeel showed up an hour later, Juvia was sure Levy had said something to him before she had arrived, and sat himself down on the floor as the girls sat on her small couch. He didn't say much at first, just watched her with an expression of concern.

"You gotta eat something," he said gruffly, nudging the plate Levy had brought closer to where Juvia sat curled up into herself, knees drawn up to her chest. "Can't cry on an empty stomach. Believe me, I've tried."

She didn't laugh. She wanted to but the laugh wouldn't come, just another fresh wave of tears instead, and Levy began to rub slow circles against her back while Gajeel sat there looking helplessly furious on her behalf, the way he always did when he didn't know what else to do.

"It's all Juvia's fault," she managed finally, when she could get words out instead of just sound. "Gray-sama is right she did all this because she didn't say no. Then, she kept pushing and pushing until there was nothing left to push, and now," her voice broke completely. "Now she doesn't even have him as a friend anymore. She had everything, Levy. Even when he wouldn't say it out loud, she had him in whatever small pieces he was willing to give her, and she was selfish and she had to want more. She had to let Bora say nice things to her because it made her feel wanted, and now look. Everything is ruined."

"Hey, no." Levy's voice was firm despite its gentleness, hand stilling against her back so she could turn Juvia's shoulders enough to look her in the eye. "That's not fair to you, Juvia. You didn't do anything wrong by wanting to be wanted. You had every right to explore another option, especially when Gray wasn't making it clear if he felt the same way about you. That's not selfish, that's just being a person."

"No," Juvia pressed the heels of her hands hard against her eyes, like she could physically push the tears back in if she tried hard enough. "Gray-sama was never an option, Levy. Gray-sama has always been the only thing Juvia has ever actually wanted. She got confused because she was hurt and she didn't know it would turn into this or she would have walked away in the first place."

"You didn't do this alone," Gajeel cut in, voice low and rough. "Don't sit there acting like you're the only one who threw punches in that fight. He said some real shitty things too, out there in that street. Real shitty. Don't forget that part just 'cause you're the one feeling guilty about it right now."

"It doesn't matter who said what or who said worse." Juvia curled tighter into herself, arms wrapping around her own knees. "Juvia is the one who started it and who let it get that far. She's the one who let herself be so desperate to be loved back that she went looking for it somewhere else entirely."

Levy exchanged a look with Gajeel over the top of Juvia's head, some silent conversation passing between them, before Levy spoke again, quieter this time, more careful. "For what it's worth, and I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but Gray's a mess too. He hasn't been eating right either and Natsu says he barely talks or fights him anymore. Lucy said she saw him staring at nothing for almost twenty minutes at the bar yesterday before Mira had to physically wave a hand in front of his face to snap him out of it."

Something in Juvia's chest twisted, "it doesn't matter," she said, voice gone flat, hollow. "He'll be fine without Juvia now.."

"Juvia — "

"He will," she said, more forceful this time and tears spilling faster. "He made that very clear. So you don't have to lie to make Juvia feel better, Levy. She would rather hear the truth than be told something just so she'll stop crying for five minutes."

Levy went quiet at that, guilt flickering across her face because there was nothing comforting left to offer that wasn't already spent, nothing true enough left to say that wouldn't ring hollow against how deep the wound actually ran.

She let Levy pull her into a hug instead, let Gajeel's hand rest heavy and awkward on top of her head like he wasn't quite sure what else to do with it but couldn't stand to do nothing, and cried until there was nothing left in her at all.

They stayed with her long after the tears finally stopped, the three of them sitting in comfortable, exhausted quiet as the light outside her window shifted slowly toward evening. Levy eventually coaxed her into eating a few bites of the now-cold plate of food.

Neither of them mentioned Gray again that night and Juvia was quietly grateful for it.

Time passed slower than she expected, and somehow faster all at once, with weeks blurring together into sameness as she moved through without really living.

They didn't speak at all. That was the worst part, worse even than the fight itself had been. The sheer, aching absence of him, where for years there had been a constant presence at the edge of every room she walked into.

She caught glimpses of him sometimes across the hall, ordering a drink at the bar with his shoulders hunched in a way that made her chest ache; disappearing out the front doors just as she came in through the back; once, painfully, passing each other on the guild's front steps close enough to touch, both of them going very still and very silent, eyes meeting for exactly one unbearable second before they both just kept walking.

It felt like watching a stranger wear his face. Worse than a stranger because if he were a stranger she wouldn't have known intimately enough to recognize every small tell of discomfort in, every place his shoulders sat differently than they used to, every way his jaw had gone tighter and his eyes had gone more shadowed in the weeks that passed.

She noticed the new, careless way he let his hair grow out past where he usually trimmed it, like he couldn't be bothered anymore, and hated herself a little for how much of her attention was still uselessly devoted to cataloguing him.

She threw herself into jobs instead, anything that took her out of Magnolia for a few days at a time and gave her something to focus on besides the hollow ache that lived permanently behind her chest now.

She heard about him mostly secondhand. Natsu mentioning, without thinking, that Gray had turned down a job because it would've meant traveling with a group instead of alone. Mira saying, carefully, that he'd started closing up the guild some nights instead of going home just to drink for hours on his own.

Lyon, on one of his visits to Magnolia to see Gray, cornered her to ask if she was doing alright, before adding, almost as an afterthought, that Gray wasn't either in case that mattered to her.

Of course it mattered to her. She just didn't know what to do with the fact that it did.

Small, worrying details piled up regardless with the same aching tenderness she'd once reserved for far happier facts about him like his favorite drink, the exact shape his eyes went when he laughed, the way he took his coffee, the fact that he hummed under his breath without noticing whenever he was concentrating on something.

She missed him.

She kept reaching for an arm that wasn't there in a crowded street, turning to say something to a space beside her that had gone permanently empty.

Wendy tried more than once during those weeks, to bridge the gap between them without either of them noticing what she was doing by arranging for the two of them to end up on the same job roster, suggesting with poorly disguised innocence, that maybe Juvia could just walk with her past Gray's usual table on the way to the request board.

Juvia loved her for the effort but dodged every single attempt regardless, not quite ready yet to have the gap closed by someone else's hand instead of her own.

"I just don't understand why you can't just talk to each other," Wendy said one afternoon, frustration bleeding gently into her usual soft-spoken concern as the two of them sat together over lunch, Carla nodding along in stern agreement beside her. "You both look so sad all the time. It doesn't make sense to me, watching two people who clearly still care about each other just... not talking."

"It isn't that simple, Wendy."

"But why not?"

Juvia hadn't had a good answer for that, not one she could put into words and had changed the subject instead, guilt curling quietly in her chest at the worry so plainly written on the younger girl's face.

By the six-week mark, she'd stopped keeping count of the days and started, instead, keeping count of something much more awful.

She hand't heard his voice in nearly two months now.

She was sitting alone on the floor of her dorm room with her knees pulled to her chest, the number arriving in her head with a kind of quiet, devastating precision that made fresh tears well before she could stop them.

Two months, if she counted from the last real conversation they'd had before all of this, not the shouting in the street, which she refused to let count as the last time she'd heard him speak to her.

Two months since he'd laughed at something she said in the guild kitchen, the sound of it so familiar and wonderful she could still summon it perfectly if she closed her eyes and tried.

She'd started to wonder, some nights, whether this was simply what the rest of her life would look like now. Avoiding the one person she wanted to have around the most.

She didn't try to hide her emotions that night. Trying hurt too much.

Outside, the whole guild was gearing up for the Harvest Festival. She could hear it even through her closed window, the distant clatter of stalls being set up, laughter carrying up from the area below, the smell of roasting chestnuts drifting faintly on the evening air.

It was, by all accounts, one of Magnolia's favorite nights of the year. The kind of night she would have spent glued firmly to Gray's side, stealing bites of whatever food he'd bought without asking and asking if he would try to win her a plushie at the stalls.

Everyone would be there tonight to help set up for the next day.

Mira had asked her twice already if she was coming, gentle and hopeful both times, and twice Juvia had made some excuse about not feeling well, which wasn't entirely a lie. Even if the illness in question had nothing to do with being sick and everything to do with the heartbreak of imagining the festival unfolding without him beside her.

She stayed in her room instead, curtains drawn shut and let herself cry in peace for the first time in days without worrying about anyone walking in on it, without having to arrange her face into something semi-presentable for Levy or Wendy or anyone else who might knock.

The guild's noise drifted up faint and cheerful through her window, the pre-festival joy happening just far enough away that she could pretend, for a little while, that it belonged to some other version of her life entirely.

A knock came at the door.

"Evergreen, Juvia already told you she's staying in today," she called out, not bothering to move from where she sat curled on the edge of her bed, voice thick and unsteady. Evergreen had come by four times already that day trying, with her usual blunt lack of tact to drag Juvia out of her room by force if necessary.

Juvia loved her for it really.

The knock came again harder this time, more insistent.

She ignored it, pressing her palms hard against her eyes, willing whoever it was to give up and go bother somebody else, go enjoy the festival without her the way everyone else clearly intended to. But the knock came a third time, louder still and she let out a long, exhausted breath through her nose before finally hauling herself up off the bed.

"Fine," she muttered, scrubbing roughly at her face with both hands, trying and mostly failing to erase the evidence of the last hour, and flung the door open with more force than strictly necessary.

Gray stood on the other side of it, arms crossed, looking at her with a frown. He'd dressed plainly, no jacket despite the cool evening air, hair a little longer than she remembered, a faint shadow of exhaustion sitting under his eyes that she recognized because she'd been wearing the same one herself for weeks now.

For a full second neither of them said anything.

Her heart slammed once, hard, against her ribs, some old instinct rising before she could stop it. She was suddenly aware of her own swollen eyes, her tangled hair, the general wreckage of the last few hours still plainly written across her face, and some old instinct made her want to shut the door again, embarrassed to be seen like this by him of all people.

She stood her ground instead, chin lifting slightly despite everything.

"...What are you doing here?" she managed finally, voice rough.

He didn't answer right away, his eyes flicked briefly over her face and she saw the exact moment he clocked the evidence of crying, before he stepped past her into the room uninvited and closed the door quietly behind himself.

A gesture so achingly familiar, something he had done countless times before without either of them thinking twice about it when he had snuck into her dorm before.

"Sorry," he said quickly, glancing around the small room like he was taking in every detail he'd missed over the last two months. "I told Erza I had a job request tonight. Didn't want her knowing I was coming up here."

"Why not?" she asked, wary. "Juvia thinks she would've ignored the rules if it meant… you know." She gestured between the two of them.

"Well," he said with a shrug. "This is all between us, not fair to keep involving the others."

Her heart skipped at the plain sound of his voice, the first she'd heard directed at her in two months and she pushed the feeling down as hard as she could, arms wrapping around herself instinctively and leaned her back against the door.

"...Oh," she said, because she couldn't think of anything better.

The silence that followed was heavy, awkward in a way nothing between them had ever been before all this, both of them clearly aware of how much needed saying and neither quite ready to be the one who said it first.

She watched him look around her room, the same room he'd seen a dozen times before without it ever feeling like this and noticed the way his gaze lingered a moment too long on the untouched dinner plate still sitting on her desk from earlier, the crumpled tissues by the bed she hadn't bothered clearing away, small evidence of exactly how badly the last few weeks had gone that she hadn't meant for him to see.

"Juvia is sorry," she said eventually because someone had to start, and she was tired, bone-tired, of all of it. She just wanted things back like they were before. "For letting everything unfold like it did."

"You don't have to apologize, I'm the one who should be sorry. And I am sorry," his voice was rough, low. "What I said about you even considering it being a joke, that wasn't fair. It wasn't true either. I've had the past two months to think about it all and I still don't know why I said that, except that I was scared and decided to be mean instead of grateful that you didn't go through with it. I've thought about apologizing so many times and started walking over here and turned around every single one of them."

"...What stopped you?"

"Same thing that's probably kept you from knocking on my door too." He let out a humorless huff of a laugh. "I was scared you'd tell me it was too late to fix it."

"Yeah," she admitted quietly. "But she hopes it's not."

Another silence settled between them, not quite comfortable, the two apologies sitting between them.

"Lyon and Meredy are dating now," Gray said suddenly.

Juvia blinked, thrown enough by the sheer randomness of it that a startled, watery laugh, "what?"

"Yeah, he told me last week." A small, almost helpless huff of amusement crossed his face. "Apparently it's been going on for months and neither of them said anything because they thought everyone would gossip too much about it."

"Why wouldn't everyone talk about that?"

"Yeah, exactly, which is what I told him. Idiot." But there was no real bite in it and something about the conversation felt, for one aching moment, almost exactly like it used to be between them.

"Tell Juvia everything," she found herself saying, sitting down on one of her dining chairs, almost without thinking, and was thrilled when he pulled out the other across from her. "How did it happen?"

He told her some rambling, half-amused story about them getting caught sneaking back into the Lamia Scale guild hall at an hour that made their intentions obvious to everyone. Juvia found herself laughing properly by the end of it, the first real laugh she'd managed in weeks, and the sound of it seemed to catch Gray off guard, she saw it flicker across his face.

"Do you want tea?" she asked, before she could think better of the offer, already halfway to her feet. "It's not much of a catch-up without it, right?"

"Right, tea sounds good."

She was glad of the excuse to have him around for a longer moment.

When she turned back with two cups, she caught him watching her, not staring exactly but in the way he'd been doing before their fight, she realized with a small jolt, since the moment he'd stepped through her door he hadn't looked away from her once.

It struck her as strange enough that she almost asked.

She handed him his cup instead and settled back at her side of the small table, and for a while they talked about the festival the next day and their plans, both of them skating gently around the larger wound between them without quite touching it.

He told her about a job he'd taken alone a few weeks back, a minor demon-clearing request out near the coast that had gone sideways in a way that made for a good story now even if it clearly hadn't felt that way at the time.

They sat for a moment, something easier settling into the space between them, the old comfortable rhythm of them returning bit by bit even under everything unspoken still sitting heavy in the room.

Then, abruptly, his expression shifted.

"Look," he said, setting his cup down carefully. "I'm not bringing this up to start another fight, I promise. But seeing that someone else offered you what you wanted, got me thinking. A lot. "

Her stomach dropped, they were finally talking about it then. "...What do you mean?"

"I mean I keep thinking about what you said. That I made you feel like you had to look somewhere else." He wouldn't quite meet her eyes now, jaw tight. "And I've had two months to sit with that, and it doesn't feel good knowing that's true."

"Bora didn't offer Juvia what she wanted," she said quietly, firmly. "What Juvia wants is you."

Something flickered across his face. "Maybe," he allowed. "But he got you a ring. And that's something that I — "

"There was no ring." The words came out faster than she meant them, cutting clean through whatever he'd been about to say. She saw the surprise land on his face. "There was never a ring, Gray-sama. Juvia never told you the actual details, because it never seemed to matter once everything else fell apart. But Bora's proposal was not romantic. It was practical. His family were pressuring him and he knew Juvia was upset about us and it would have been a marriage of convenience. There was no ring, no getting down on one knee, nothing. He was trying to be kind to Juvia at a moment when she desperately needed someone to be kind to her." She swallowed hard. "There was just an offer. That's all it ever was."

Gray went quiet, processing that, something working slowly behind his eyes. Relief, she thought, though there was something more complicated tangled up in it too, something closer to shame. "...Well. That's good to hear," he said finally and let out an unsteady breath. "It makes this next thing a little less nerve-wracking, honestly. Knowing you won't be comparing it to anything."

"Comparing what?" A flicker of unease crept into her voice.

"I've been thinking about this for the past few weeks," he said like he needed to get the words out in one continuous rush before his nerve failed him entirely. "Longer than that, honestly, if I'm being completely straight with you. Since long before the ball, if I really think about it. I just didn't have the guts to do anything about until I almost lost the chance to do anything about it at all."

Before she could ask what he meant, he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small velvet box, setting it carefully on the table between them and flipping it open.

A ring sat nestled inside, a stunning yellow diamond catching what little light filtered through her curtains.

Juvia stared at it, horror and disbelief warring across her face in equal measure. "What the hell are you doing?"

"You were right," he said, steady despite the visible nerves in his hands. "What you said in that street about me not wanting anyone else to have you, you were right. I don't want anyone else to have you." She stared at him and was completely caught off guard. "Because I want you for myself."

She was speechless. Could do nothing but stare at him, her chest heaving, "...But we're not even… we're not even dating," she finally managed, voice barely above a whisper.

"Yeah, I know." A small, almost helpless laugh escaped him, disbelieving of his own actions even as he spoke them. "It's crazy. I know it's crazy. I've gone back and forth about whether to even do it, whether it's too much and too fast after everything, whether I should've asked you to dinner first or I don't know, done this properly, whatever properly even looks like for us. But… you've always been honest with me and never holding back on going for what you want. I figured I owed you that much in return, for once, instead of making you wait years for me to work up the nerve the way I usually do."

"Gray — "

"Let me finish. Please." His voice cracked slightly, and he pressed on before she could interrupt again. "When I picture my future, Juvia, I see you in it. Not as a friend, but as my wife. I've pictured it for longer than I'll let myself admit, if I'm honest. I see some stupid version of a house somewhere quiet, with you in it and you're mine. And these last two months, going that long without getting to see you or talk to you, it sucked, Juvia. It's the worst thing I've ever felt, worse than I expected, and I never want to feel that again."

She half-laughed, half-sobbed, overwhelmed entirely, hands coming up to press against her own mouth like she could hold the feeling in. Gray shifted closer on instinct, one hand coming to rest gently against her knee.

"I've had to try and train myself not to love you back," he looked devastated as he spoke the words. "But I'm a really shitty student because I just can't stop. And I figured the best way to always keep you safe is to always be by your side, so that I can be there to protect you."

"You…" She licked her lips, they had gone dry from breathing through her mouth after her jaw popped open at the sight of him presenting a ring. "What are you saying?

He looked like he was having too many swirling thoughts at once before he took a deep breath and shifted forward off his own seat into the space beside her on the floor.

On one knee and looking at her with wide, desperate eyes.

"Will you marry me, Juvia?" He rolled his shoulders and glanced awkwardly from the ring to her. "I know we literally just started talking again but I can't hold this back any more the way I have been." He sucked in his cheek for a minute before finishing what he was saying. "I'm also not pressuring you for an answer right now, I'm just putting the ball in your court this time."

"This is a lot," she managed finally, voice thick. "Juvia doesn't… she doesn't know what to do with all of this at once. Two months of nothing and now this?"

"I know." His thumb brushed absently against her knee, grounding her. "I know it's a lot, especially after everything. I'm not asking you to say yes right now, I just… please consider it. All I want is to keep you forever, however long it takes you to be ready to let me have that. If… it's what you still want too."

She looked at him for a long moment, tears spilling freely now, disbelieving hope daring to unfurl in her despite every hard lesson of the last two months warning her against it. "And what if Juvia says no?"

Something flickered across his face before he answered, "I'll still be here, I'm not disappearing on you again either way. I already tried that and it didn't work out great for either of us."

A wet, unsteady laugh escaped her despite everything.

"...Juvia will think about it," she finally whispered, echoing the exact words she'd once given Bora on a different balcony entirely, except this time the words felt like the beginning of something instead of like a last resort.

He nodded, gently closing the box and pressing it into her hand instead of taking it back with him. "Keep it and see what you think. No pressure."

"Gray-sama," she looked down at the small box in her palm, throat tight. "Why now?"

He was quiet for a moment, considering the question properly instead of brushing past it. "Honestly, because I heard you weren't coming to help with set-up tonight and I thought about you sitting up here alone, and it was probably because you were upset with me. I thought if I don't do this tonight, I'm going to keep finding reasons to put it off and I didn't want to give myself a third month without you." He gave her a small smile. "Mostly just… I missed you."

She reached out, almost without deciding to, and laid her free hand gently over his on her knee, "Juvia missed you too. Every single day."

He turned his hand over to lace their fingers together properly, thumb brushing slow and careful across her knuckles, and for a moment neither of them said anything else at all, the quiet between them entirely different now than it had been at the start of the evening.

He left not long after, a lingering press of his hand against her cheek as the only goodbye either of them seemed to have words for. The moment the door clicked shut behind him, Juvia sat frozen for a long moment, staring at the small velvet box still in her palm.

She pressed both hands over her face, drawing in one long, shaking breath after another, entirely unsure what to do with the enormous thing had just happened. But for the first time in weeks, she found herself smiling through the tears instead of only crying through them.

She found Levy and Gajeel down at the festival later the next night, unable to sit alone in her room with the weight of the ring box any longer, needing at least the comfort of familiar company even if she wasn't ready to explain why. They were sharing a paper cone of roasted chestnuts near the edge of the bonfire's glow, Gajeel's arm slung loose and easy around Levy's shoulders, and both of them straightened in surprise when they spotted her picking her way through the crowd toward them.

"Hey, we thought you weren't coming," Levy said, budging over on the low wall they'd claimed to make room for her. "You look... different. Good different. What happened?"

"We talked," she admitted, sitting down between them, a helpless, disbelieving smile refusing to leave her face no matter how she tried to arrange her expression into something more neutral.

Gajeel eyed her for a long moment, "oh yeah?"

"Yes." She almost squeaked happily and accidentally made eye-contact with Gray who was in a competition with Natsu on the Punching Arcade Machine and he smiled and waved at seeing her there.

"'Bout time," Gajeel muttered and he offered her the paper cone of chestnuts without another word.

Levy squeezed her hand, delighted and clearly bursting with a dozen questions she was valiantly holding back.

"Thank you both," Juvia said. "For everything. Juvia doesn't think she could have gotten through any of it without you two."

"That's what we're here for," Levy said simply, resting her head against Juvia's shoulder for a moment, and the three of them sat there together a while longer.

Over the days that followed, things between them slowly, carefully, began to shift back toward something that resembled normal, or near enough to it that the rest of the guild noticed they were back.

Neither of them said anything and the ring stayed tucked away in its box at the bottom of Juvia's top drawer, unspoken between them even as everything else eased.

But Gray started finding small ways to close the distance they'd spent two months carefully maintaining.

The backs of his fingers brushing hers when they stood beside each other at the bar, seemingly by accident, though it happened too often to really be one.

The side of his boot resting lightly against hers when they sat next to each other at the long guild tables, a small point of contact he never seemed to move away from first.

A hand settling against the small of her back after he held a door open for her to walk through, gone again before she could fully register it, though the warmth of it lingered far longer than the touch itself did.

He started offering his elbow when they walked together instead of just waiting for her to just take it, an old-fashioned little gesture that made her flush every single time. And he began walking her to and from the guild each day without being asked, he simply appeared outside her door each morning, and she simply started expecting him to be there at the end of the day to go back with her.

She noticed, too, the small things he did that had nothing to do with touch at all.

The way he was ordering her tea alongside his own coffee in the mornings, the way he'd angle himself slightly, so he could keep half an eye on her even in the middle of some entirely unrelated conversation with someone else.

She thought, more than once during those two weeks, about opening the box again.

About sliding the ring on just to see how it felt, just for herself, but some cautious, self-protective instinct kept the box shut in the drawer, kept the question at arm's length even while everything else between them healed a little more each day.

It went on for two weeks like that and the whole guild seemed thoroughly convinced they'd simply patched up whatever rift had kept them apart and gone back to being close friends again.

Mira kept sighing happily every time she caught them together, hands clasped under her chin in a way that made Juvia's ears go warm every time she noticed it.

Natsu had stopped tiptoeing around Gray's moods weeks ago the second he noticed the shift, going straight back to dragging him into ridiculous arguments like nothing had ever been wrong at all.

Even Erza, usually so perceptive about the undercurrents running beneath the guild's daily chaos, seemed to have settled comfortably into the assumption that whatever had broken between the two of them had simply mended.

No one knew about the ring.

No one knew about his proposal sitting quietly in the back of Juvia's mind.

He came up, unexpectedly, at a girls' night two weeks into all of it. In Cana's small dorm room crowded with cushions and half-empty cup, the air thick with chaos of too many women trying to talk over each other at once.

Levy sat flushed and giggling on Cana's couch, gushing helplessly about Gajeel being, in her exact words, "an actual enormous softie under all that iron."

"He made me a bookshelf," Levy said, practically glowing, hands pressed to her cheeks like she still couldn't quite believe it herself. "He just showed up one day with this beautiful, obviously hand-carved thing because I mentioned once, one time, months ago, that I was running out of space for my more beautiful hardbacks. He acted like it was nothing when I tried to thank him."

"That's so sweet," Wendy said fondly from her spot curled up with Carla by the window.

"Unexpected," Lucy admitted through her laughter, "but I can definitely see it now that you say it."

Eventually, inevitably, the conversation turned to Juvia. "So," Cana said, eyeing her over the rim of her glass, that particular sharp, curious look she got whenever she scented a drama, "you and Gray, huh? Ever since you two made up, you seem stronger than ever. What actually happened for you to talk again? You've been suspiciously tight-lipped about the whole thing."

Juvia hesitated, unwilling to start rumors about something that wasn't remotely settled yet, and couldn't tell Erza that he snuck into her dorm room. "We talked," she said with a shrug. "He's been really kind to her lately."

"But when?" Lucy tilted her head. "We came home from a job just before Harvest Festival and he was all moody, then the next day you two were giggling together in the beer tent like nothing had happened."

"Well," Juvia flushed. "He found Juvia that night he came home and we talked it out."

"What did he say?" Erza asked curiously. "He could barely hear your name for the whole time you were apart without snapping at someone, I'm curious to know what he was thinking about."

"He was honest with Juvia and Juvia was honest with him." She smiled as Cana refilled her cup with wine. "We each apologized and caught up and we just missed each other too much to let it go on."

"He definitely feels guilty about the whole thing," Cana said, waving a hand, entirely unaware of how close she'd landed to something much bigger. "I mean, you two are usually inseparable so watching you both actually keep apart for that long was honestly kind of unsettling. I got so used to seeing you appear in one spot and then him show up two seconds later or the other way around."

"It really was strange," Wendy chimed in from the corner, curled up with Carla on the window seat. "I kept almost asking him where you were out of habit, before I remembered you two weren't talking anymore."

Mira gave a soft, delighted little laugh, refilling her own cup from the bottle on the low table. "It really is a relief seeing you both like that again. Honestly, I don't think I realized how much I'd gotten used to the two of you as a package deal until you weren't one anymore."

"What do you mean?" Juvia asked, genuinely confused, glancing between them.

"Oh, come on, as if you don't know it," Lucy teased, nudging her shoulder, clearly expecting a laugh in return rather than the blank, uncertain look she actually got.

"Know what?"

The girls exchanged an amused, faintly baffled look, like they couldn't quite believe she was asking.

"Juvia," Mira said gently, "ever since you joined the guild, you and Gray have basically never not been finding each other. Every time he orders a drink at the bar, he immediately follows it up with 'and one for Juvia too' before you've even started drinking for the night or finished what you were already drinking."

Now that she thought about it, he did often buy her drinks. But, she thought he was being kind and buying everyone a round.

"Or you'll appear somewhere," Lucy added, "and two seconds later he's suddenly right next to you, no matter what he was doing before. Doesn't matter if he was in the middle of an argument with Natsu or halfway through a job briefing. If you walk in, he finds his way over."

"And if you're not around," Cana put in, "he asks every single one of us where you are. It used to be kind of funny, but I'm sort of used to it now. He'll ask Mira first if you've come in yet, all casual like and then if she doesn't know he'll ask literally every other girl in the hall until somebody finally gives him an answer. He's done that for years."

"Juvia always just thought that was just normal for him," Juvia said slowly. "That is just how guild mates who worked together often looked out for each other, no?"

"Nobody else gets that treatment," Wendy said, gentle but certain.

Juvia sat very still, the noise of the room fading into something distant and unimportant as the weight of what they were saying settled slowly over her.

"...Juvia didn't know that," she said, voice barely above a whisper.

"There's probably a lot you don't know," Mira said, not unkindly. "He's not exactly forthcoming about any of it but I don't think it's ever been a mystery to the rest of us watching from the outside. We all just assumed you two would figure it out eventually."

He had loved her back.

The whole time.

In every unspoken way he knew how.

She sat there for a long moment after the conversation moved on to other things, only half-listening, turning the revelation over and over in her head.

Juvia walked home alone that night and by the time she reached her own door, she already knew what she needed to do.

The next morning, dressing for the day in her small room, her heart sat heavy and fast in her chest all at once, some fragile, trembling thing she couldn't quite settle.

She'd woken before dawn and reached into the drawer to out the small velvet box, opening it properly for the first time in two weeks.

The ring inside was more beautiful than she'd let herself really look at that first overwhelming night, a stunning oval yellow diamond at its center surrounded by two delicate half-moon clear diamonds set carefully along a gold band.

She lifted it carefully from its cushion, turning it slowly between her fingers, watching the way the small stones caught the light.

Her breath caught.

She remembered, suddenly, back in Rain Bringer Village on one of those first strange, tender days he'd taken her to the top of the hill that overlooked the whole valley and shown her the sun rise there because he knew she'd like it, breaking gold and impossible over the horizon while she stood there struck entirely speechless by it.

She'd laughed and some foolish, hopeful thing slipping out before she'd thought better of it, that if she ever wore an engagement ring from him, she wanted it to look like the sun itself, since he'd been the one to finally show it to her.

She hadn't meant anything serious by it, especially after he laughed it off and told her to keep dreaming.

She'd certainly never expected him to remember it and follow through.

Her chest ached for him.

Carefully, hands trembling, she slid the ring onto the correct finger, and let out a small, delighted, disbelieving squeal the second it settled into place, staring at her own hand like she barely recognized it, turning it this way and that in the pale morning light streaming through her curtains to watch the diamond make shapes on the ceiling and walls.

Hours later, when she'd got up and dressed, she heard familiar footsteps sound outside that she'd know anywhere, any time, in any crowd, the sound of him arriving to walk her to the guild the way he had every morning for weeks now.

She didn't stop to consider anything, didn't smooth her hair or steady her breathing or do any of the small careful things she might normally have done before facing him. She simply moved, flinging her door open and running through the Fairy Hills hallways and crossing the distance between them in a handful of quick steps before launching herself straight into his arms.

"Whoa! Hey, you okay?" His arms came up automatically to catch her, startled, one hand instinctively cradling the back of her head, already scanning what he could see of her face for whatever might be wrong.

"Yes," she said, muffled against his shoulder, arms wound tight around his neck.

"...Okay. Good."

He still looked faintly bewildered when she finally pulled back enough to look at him. He didn't push, just huffed a small laugh, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders at the obvious happiness on her face even without understanding its source and reached down to take her right hand, lacing their fingers together as they started toward the guild.

He hadn't noticed the left one yet, she realized with a small thrill, tucked slightly behind her as they walked. "You're being weird today. Good weird, but still weird."

"You don't like it when Juvia is weird?" She teased and tilted her head towards him.

"Never said that." He glanced sideways at her more than once on the walk over, clearly baffled but the corner of his mouth tugging up every time he caught her practically glowing beside him, giddy in a way she hadn't let herself be in months. "As long as you're happy."

The guild filled in slowly that morning.

"Morning, Juvia," Lucy said, sliding into the booth with a warm smile, Erza settling on her other side a moment later with a cup of tea. "You seem extra chipper today. Having a good morning?"

Juvia felt the smile stretch wider across her face before she could stop it, felt the ring sitting warm and solid against her finger, felt Gray settle in the seat directly beside her with that same faint, uncertain happiness still lingering in his expression from earlier when she jumped at him.

"The best morning," she said, unable to keep the enormous smile off her face and even more unable to keep the words in a second longer, her heart hammering hard enough that she could feel it in her own throat. "Because Gray and Juvia are engaged!"

The table went quiet for a beat, half-laughing it off as a joke similar to how she would before and loudly fantasies about them being together forever.

Lucy's mouth already curving into an amused smile, clearly waiting for the punchline or for Gray's reaction until Juvia lifted her hand proudly and the yellow diamond caught the light streaming through the guild's high windows,catching every eye at the nearby tables in a single blinding flash.

"...Wait," Lucy said slowly, the smile freezing on her face, eyes going wide as saucers. "WHAT?!"

The reaction rippled outward fast.

Mira's delighted shriek audible from clear across the room, dropping the tray she'd been carrying with a clatter that nobody paid any attention to and grabbing a just as shocked Erza's arm in delight. Cana nearly choked on her drink, sputtering and slamming her cup down hard enough to spill it; Natsu abandoned his breakfast entirely and even Gajeel had an expression of pure disbelief.

Gray looked briefly stunned himself, clearly not having expected this to be the moment, or the method of receiving his answer, his own mouth falling slightly open at the sight of her hand raised for the whole guild to see.

There was no going back on it now. She'd made it entirely public in the loudest, most undeniable way she knew how, and the look on his face said he understood exactly what that meant. Her answer, given loudly and without hesitation, in front of every single person who mattered to either of them.

"Yeah, we are," he said, low, almost to himself, already moving to pull her into his arms before Cana's voice cut through the celebration, half-shouted over the general chaos.

"But you weren't even dating, you just started talking again and now you're getting married?!"

Gray and Juvia looked at each other, and laughed. Both of them entirely unbothered by how little sense any of it made from the outside. "Of course," Gray said, grinning wider than she'd seen him grin in longer than she could remember, a boyish look that transformed his whole face. "Why wouldn't we?"

"It's a long story," Juvia added while laughing.

He took her left hand gently in both of his, ignoring the noise around them entirely, turning it so the ring caught the light properly, studying it on her hand for a long moment like he still couldn't quite believe she'd actually put it on.

Then he bent to press a slow, tender kiss just above it, right against her knuckle.

When he lifted his head to look at her again, his eyes were bright, his voice rough with more feeling than she'd ever once heard him say plainly out loud, low enough that it felt, despite the chaos erupting around them, like it belonged only to the two of them.

"Thank you," he murmured, just for her, though half the guild was undoubtedly still watching, still shouting questions neither of them was answering yet. "For choosing me even after I made it so hard to."

She smiled through happy tears, entirely undone, one hand coming up to cup his jaw, thumb brushing gently along the sharp line of it. "Juvia would never choose anyone else," she said softly, just for him, the noise of the excitement fading into something distant. "It was always going to be you. Even in the two months she spent being furious with you, it was always going to be you."

"Good," he said, something fierce and grateful and entirely unguarded in his voice now, pulling her fully into his arms at last, the guild's noisy celebration rising up around them in earnest. "Because I'm not letting you go again. Not for two months, not even for two days. Not ever, if I can help it."

"You'd better not," she murmured, muffled against his shoulder, laughing and crying all at once, the whole broken, aching, beautiful mess of the last two months finally settling into something that felt right.

The celebration went on for the better part of an hour, the guild hall filling steadily as word spread and more people arrived to see for themselves, demanding the story in full even as Gray and Juvia gave up trying to tell it in any coherent order, both of them talking over each other and laughing too hard halfway through half the important parts.

Mira insisted on breaking out the more expensive bottles she'd apparently been saving for exactly this kind of occasion, though nobody could quite agree on when she'd started saving it or how she'd known to. Levy hugged Juvia so tightly she nearly knocked the wind out of her, already talking excitedly about wedding planning before either of them had discussed anything close to a date.

Gajeel offered Gray a single, gruff handshake and a warning that if he ever made Juvia cry like that again there would be consequences, delivered with just enough menace to be only half a joke.

It was Lyon's arrival, an hour or so later, that pulled the loudest reaction of the whole morning. He walked in mid-celebration with Meredy trailing behind him, clearly expecting an ordinary visit, and stopped dead in the doorway at the sight of half the guild crowded around Gray and Juvia in the middle of what was unmistakably some kind of celebration.

"What did I miss?" he asked, bewildered, glancing around at the chaos.

"Gray and Juvia are engaged," six different people answered at once, in six different tones of continued disbelief.

Lyon's face went through an entire journey in the span of about two seconds and finally, a wide, delighted grin. "You're joking."

"Nope," Gray said with his arms crossed as Juvia showed everyone the ring and the details of how he knew to get the right one for her.

"You absolute insane," Lyon crossed the hall in a few long strides and pulled Gray into a rough hug that Gray only half-heartedly tried to fend off. "I leave you alone for one week and you go and do something like this without telling me first?"

"Didn't exactly plan the timing," Gray admitted, laughing, prying himself free. "It kind of happened all at once, I actually asked her a while ago and it's how we started talking again." He looked sheepish as everyone gaped at the two of them.

"You apologized to her… with a proposal?" Lucy asked slowly and looked up at Gray who just blushed.

"No," Juvia laughed fondly at him and opened up his crossed arm and wrapped them around herself so her back was to his chest. "He apologized and then proposed to Juvia." She sighed happily and leaned against him.

"Of course he did," Erza chuckled and shook her head.

"I'm happy for you," Lyon said, quiet enough that it felt sincere rather than performative. "Both of you."

"Thank you, Lyon," Juvia said, meaning it fully.

Meredy, hovering near Lyon's elbow, offered her own soft, genuine smile. "We should double date sometime," she said, sly, glancing sideways at Lyon.

"Yeah yeah," Gray muttered, though there was no real bite in it and was still flustered at all the affection. "Maybe."

By the time the celebration finally began, Gray found a quiet corner and pulled Juvia gently along with him, away from the noise for just a moment.

"Hey," he said, low, just for her, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear with careful fingers. "You okay? That was a lot all at once.

"Juvia is more than okay." She leaned into his touch, eyes bright, ring catching the light between them from where he hands rested on his chest. "Juvia wanted to surprise you."

"Yeah." He pressed his forehead gently to hers, voice dropping lower still. "Consider me surprised."

They stood there a while longer, tucked into their small corner of the noisy, celebrating guild hall and took in each others presence together. With Gray whispering silly jokes and flirts in her ear to make her giggle and slap his chest as they beamed at each other.

Mira appeared on a few minutes later and the hall's usual noise softened as she leaned into the mic to speak.

"Oh, come on," Mira said, delighted, and gestured to Erza who was already steering Gray and Juvia by the shoulders toward the small open space near the center of the hall before either of them could protest. "Let's have a dance for the happy couple."

Gray blinked, caught off guard, glancing at Juvia with something sheepish and a little helpless in his expression. "She's not gonna let this go, is she?"

"She never does," she said, laughing despite the sudden flutter in her chest, though she let herself be pulled the rest of the way without any real resistance.

He took her hand properly then, the same hand that still wore his ring, and settled his other palm carefully at her waist, and for a moment they simply stood there in the small cleared space, both of them a little unsteady with the newness of the action, aware of every eye in the hall now turned eagerly in their direction.

Then the music swelled gently around them, and he started to sway, clearly more out of practice than he'd ever admit out loud, and she laughed softly and let him lead anyway, stepping easily into the rhythm of it.

"This is so embarrassing," he muttered, though there was no real complaint in it, his ears going faintly pink under the attention.

"Juvia thinks it's perfect," she said, resting her head lightly against his shoulder as they turned slowly in place, the noise of the hall fading into something distant and soft around the edges of the moment. "She loves to dance with you, Gray-sama!"

His arm tightened slightly around her at that, something apologetic and tender both moving across his face. "I'm sorry it took this long for you to get one."

"Don't be sorry. Just don't make her wait that long again."

"Never," he said, quiet and certain, and drew her a little closer as the song wound gently toward its close, the two of them turning slow circles under the golden light of the guild hall, wrapped up entirely in each other and paying no mind at all to the small, delighted audience watching from every corner of the room. "We'll have to practice before the big day, right?"

She squealed and pressed her face into his chest as if that would help conceal her excitement. "We will," her heart raced at the idea.

Juvia pulled back to look up at him again to see him staring at her with the most wonderful smile on his face.

When the last notes of the song finally faded, he didn't let go of her right away.

Instead he let go of her hand to cup her jaw, thumb brushing softly along her cheekbone, and searched her face for a long moment. She answered by leaning into his palm, heart hammering loud enough that she was certain he could feel it through the small space still left between them.

Then he finally kissed her, soft and slow and achingly gentle, one hand still cradling her jaw, the other pulling her close at the small of her back. It was nothing like she'd imagined it would be, warm and unhurried, he held her so careful she could hardly believe it was the same hands she had so often seen in wars and fights.

It started soft, just the barest press of his mouth against hers, like he still couldn't quite believe he was allowed to. But the second she made a small, helpless sound against his lips and one hand fisted his hair to pull him closer, something in him seemed to break.

His hand slid from her jaw into her hair, fingers threading through it, tilting her head just slightly to deepen the kiss, and the arm at her back curled tighter, closing every last inch of distance between them until there was nothing left at all.

She felt the low sound that escaped him against her mouth and answered it with one of her own, rising up onto her toes to meet him properly, both hands now in his hair like she could somehow pull his face even closer than he already was.

Juvia let herself sink entirely into the feeling of finally, finally being wanted this openly, this completely, with no fear left standing between them at all anymore.

The world narrowed down to exactly this. His mouth on hers, his hand cradling the back of her head like something precious, the scent of him surrounding her entirely, and for one moment neither of them remembered there was an entire guild hall watching.

A ragged cheer went up somewhere behind them followed immediately by Cana's delighted wolf-whistle at them but neither of them broke apart right away, both far too lost in the moment to care much about the audience.

When they finally did pull back, just far enough to look at each other properly, Gray was wearing an expression she'd never quite seen on him before, he was a little dazed and blinking at her quickly.

"Okay, yeah," he said, breathless, a slow, helpless grin spreading across his face. "I'm an idiot, we should have been doing that a lot more."

Juvia laughed, bright and unrestrained, tears of pure happiness slipping free all over again, her whole chest full to bursting.

"Juvia agrees completely," she said, already leaning back in before he could say another word, and this time neither of them bothered pretending they cared who was watching at all.

The rest of the day dissolved into celebration, more drinks and more stories retold and re-embellished with each telling, Cana even betting pool on who would be the maid of honor and best man.

By the time the two of them finally slipped out into the cool evening air, Magnolia's lanterns just beginning to flicker on along the streets, Juvia felt pleasantly warm and loose-limbed from the whole day and Gray held an arm out for her to take as they made their unhurried way back toward Fairy Hills.

They walked slower than usual, neither of them in any real hurry for the night to end, trading soft, half-tipsy laughter over some ridiculous thing Natsu had said hours earlier, her head tucked against his shoulder the whole way. But when they reached the familiar turn that led toward the dormitory gates, Gray slowed to a stop entirely, a look crossing his face as he stared down the path without moving to take it.

"Gray-sama?" Juvia stopped beside him, glancing between his face and the empty street ahead. "What's wrong?"

He didn't answer right away, like he was turning something over before he let himself say it out loud. "I don't want to say goodbye to you," he said finally, and he looked so openly sad about it that it startled a soft ache in her chest.

"Huh?"

"I mean I don't want to get to Fairy Hills because then I won't get to see you again until tomorrow." He let out a self-conscious huff but continued, "which is stupid, I know it's only one night. We've done plenty of those apart but now it's — I don't — We should be — "

She knew that particular ache intimately, had lived inside it for years. Every single evening she'd ever had to walk away from him and count down the hours until she'd see him again. She'd simply gotten so used to carrying it that some part of her had forgotten it was possible for someone to feel that way about her instead.

"Juvia feels the same way," she admitted softly. "What do you want to do?"

He glanced at her, something hopeful and nervous both flickering behind his eyes, and asked, breathless, like he could hardly believe he was actually saying it out loud, "do you wanna... stay at mine?"

She smiled, warm and immediate, no hesitation in it at all. "Of course she does." Then, practical despite the impatient flutter in her chest, she tugged gently at his sleeve toward the dormitory gates. "But we should stop and get Juvia some pajamas and a change of clothes. She wouldn't want to show up to breakfast tomorrow in last night's dress."

He laughed, easy and relieved, some of the earlier nervous tension draining visibly out of his shoulders. "Yeah, that's fair. Let's do that."

They made quick work of it, Juvia darting into her room just long enough to grab a small bag while Gray waited outside her door, and then the two of them set off together across town toward his apartment. The same one she'd been to more times than she could easily count over the years, always as a friend stopping by, always leaving again by a reasonable hour.

It felt entirely different walking there now, her hand tucked warm in his and the ring on her finger catching the last of the evening light.

He was oddly nervous letting her in, she noticed with quiet amusement. Straightening cushions that didn't need straightening before she sat on his couch, apologizing for a mess that barely existed, hovering anxiously as he asked if she wanted tea, water, something to eat, if the temperature was alright, if she wanted the window open or closed.

"Gray-sama," she caught his hand mid-fuss, laughing softly, tugging him gently toward her. "Juvia is possibly the easiest person alive to impress where you're concerned. She promises you don't need to work this hard just for her to stay the night here."

"That's not really the point," he said, a little sheepish, though he didn't pull his hand away. "I want to go out of my way for you."

She melted entirely.

"Well," she smiled up at him and decided to take him up on the offer. "Juvia likes to drink tea before going to bed."

He smiled back and leaned down to kiss her cheek, "coming right up."

They lay in his bed a while later, facing each other and he had one hand resting gently against her cheek, thumb tracing absent lines against her skin, and for a long moment neither of them said anything at all, simply looking at each other.

"Can I ask you something?" Gray said eventually, voice hushed in the quiet of the room.

"Anything."

"Why did you say yes?" His hand moved so he caressed her hair a little now instead. "I mean, I'm not complaining but I'm curious."

She searched his face carefully in the low light. "Juvia worked it out at her girls' night. Some things Mira and Cana said made her realized it wasn't just some victory for you to be beating Bora for her answer. It was something you actually wanted for a long time, and you finally let yourself go after."

He was quiet for a moment, his thumb still moving slow against her cheek. "Yeah, that's pretty accurate," A small, rueful smile. "I've wanted it for longer than I probably should tell you about, given how bad I was at showing it." He hesitated, then added, more honestly, "but it wasn't just that. There was some panic in it too, if I'm being fully straight with you."

"Panic?"

"Losing you." His voice dropped lower, more serious. "In a fight, on a job, something I couldn't stop no matter how hard I tried, that's always been something that terrifies me. I mean it almost already happened in the Alvarez war. But then I started thinking about a different kind of losing you after you said you were proposed to. Watching you end up happy in somebody else's arms instead of mine scared me even more." He let a huff of a laugh. "If I had to actually pick, I think I'd rather you died than that. At least then I wouldn't have to watch it happen every day for the rest of my life."

She laughed, startled and a little delighted despite the morbidness of her words, swatting lightly at his chest. "That's terrible, Gray-sama."

"I know, but it is true," he laughed back a little.

"Well, for what it's worth," she said, smile still lingering, "Juvia thinks she'd rather you died too, if the other option was watching you happy with someone else. She probably would be the one to kill you, and her, if that ended up being the case."

He laughed properly at that and pulled her in closer against his chest, tucking her head beneath his chin, arms wrapping fully and securely around her. "This is the rest of my life," he murmured into her hair, quiet and certain. "I'm so excited to spend my forever with you, Juvia."

She snuggled in closer, breathing him in, her hand resting flat and steady over his heart. "Juvia is excited too," she whispered back.