Archive of Our Own

It all started in October, and it started because Gray couldn't remember the name of a cake Juvia had mentioned over breakfast. Something with pears in it from the bakery on Clover Street that she'd had once with Levy and hadn't stopped thinking about since. She'd described it for a full minute and he'd nodded while eating his eggs and said "sounds good," and then three days later he'd walked past that bakery on his way home from a job, thought I should get her that cake, and stood outside the window with absolutely no idea which one it was.

He'd gone in anyway. He'd pointed at something with fruit on it. She'd been delighted, because she was always delighted by him, and she'd eaten every bite and kissed him with sugar on her mouth and told him it was lovely.

It wasn't the pear one. He'd found that out a week later when she mentioned it again, dreamily, as if she'd never had it before.

She hadn't said anything at the time, she never said anything.

That night he lay on his back in the dark with her asleep half on top of him, her hair spread across his chest and one of her hands curled loosely against his collarbone, and he made himself think about it properly.

He was a bad boyfriend.

It wasn't a new thought. It had been sitting in the back of his head since the day they'd made it official, maybe even before that.

He was not easy to be with. He knew that. He went quiet after bad jobs and stayed quiet for days. He answered what's wrong with nothing and meant I can't. He forgot to say the things other people seemed to say without trying. You look nice, I missed you, I'm glad you're here. He'd think them. He'd think them so loudly sometimes he was sure she could hear. But they got stuck somewhere between his chest and his mouth, and by the time he'd worked them loose the moment had gone.

He'd watched Gajeel with Levy. Watched Alzack with Bisca. Other guys just knew how to do it with all the flowers, the little speeches, the stuff that made girls go pink and tell their friends about it later. Gray didn't do any of that. Gray did nothing. He was a closed door she'd decided to live beside.

And she'd waited for him for years. Years. She'd given him everything she had, loudly and constantly, and what had she got in return? A guy who couldn't remember which cake.

Juvia shifted in her sleep and made a small sound and pressed her face further into his shoulder. He put his hand on her back without thinking about it. With the other he reached down and tugged the blanket back over her feet, where it had slipped off, her feet always got cold in the night and woke her up if he didn't.

The next morning during breakfast he had briefly asked her what the name of that pastry was again and after she finished talking about it, he went through the kitchen drawer until he found an old job ledger he'd never used. He tore out the first two pages and wrote he wrote:

Pear cake. Clover St. Almond base.

It was a week later, and he had bought a notebook. Which had grown to a page and a half, by the time he heard Juvia and Levy talking at the guild.

He was at the bar waiting for Mira to finish with the job ledger he requestes, they were at the table right behind him. Levy with her feet up on a second chair, Juvia beside her with a knitting project in her lap that he was fairly sure was meant to be baby socks.

" — and by next Christmas," Levy was saying, patting her stomach, "there'll actually be someone to do the whole Santa thing for. Can you imagine? Gajeel in a beard."

Juvia giggled. "Juvia can imagine it. He would be very frightening."

"He would be terrifying. But hewould do it anyway, so." Levy sighed happily. "Master used to go all out, you know. When I first joined, it was just me and Gray and Can, we were so tiny, and Master got this huge red suit from somewhere and a beard down to his knees, and he climbed in through the guild's skylight on Christmas Eve and got completely stuck halfway. Macao and Wakaba had to pull him down by the boots." She laughed. "And then the next year Natsu came, and then Erza, and then Mira and Elfman and Lisanna, and every single year he did it again. Stockings for all of us with our names sewn on. He'd fill them with sweets and stupid little toys, and he'd leave a big present for everyone under the tree at the guild. We all knew it was him by the end, obviously. But nobody ever said. It was the best part of the whole year."

Gray remembered that, he hadn't thought about it in a long time. The stocking with his name on it, stitched a little crooked. Cana eating all her sweets before breakfast and then trying to trade him something for his too.

Juvia was quiet for a second.

"That sounds lovely," she said quietly.

"It was! You would have loved when we — " Levy stopped. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong!" Juvia said too quickly. Then, more quietly, "Juvia's just… she never actually had that. Santa presents or stockings." She fiddled with the end of her yarn. "At the home, there wasn't really money for it, she supposes. And nobody much wanted to sit near Juvia at Christmas anyway because her rain washed away the snow. Then in Phantom, Christmas was just another day. Master Jose didn't really believe in it."

There was a very long pause.

"Never?" Levy sounded genuinely horrified. "Not once? Not even an orange in a sock?"

"It's all right!" Juvia said. "It's really all right. Juvia has Fairy Tail now, and Gray-sama, and she doesn't need presents. She just thinks it sounds nice, that's all. Waking up and finding things someone picked out just for you."

Levy said something else, too soft and quiet for him to hear and Juvia laughed and said really, it's fine, and their conversation drifted on to baby names.

Gray stood at the bar with his hand on the counter and didn't move.

Then, he reached into his back pocket and took out the notebook. He flicked it open under the edge of the bar where nobody could see.

Pear cake. Rose lip tint. Sewing machine. Blue dress, Harbour Row.

A page and a half of things she liked, things she'd looked at and put back. Things she'd said Juvia doesn't need, but they were definitnely things that Juvia wanted.

He'd been writing it for a week without realising what it was.

It was a Christmas list for Santa. Hers. The one she'd never got to write, because nobody had ever asked.

And he'd been making it the whole time without her knowing.

"Gray?" Mira asked for him, holding out the ledger. "You wanted this job?"

He closed the notebook and put it back in his pocket swiftly.

"Yeah," he said. "Thanks, Mira."

After that, he listened on purpose and it filled up faster than he expected.

That was the thing about Juvia, she told him everything. He'd always known that, in a vague, background way, the way you know the sound of a clock in a room but once he started actually listening for it, it was like someone had turned the volume up. She liked things all the time, out loud and in detail.

He started keeping the notebook under the newspaper at breakfast, scribbling while she talked if it was relevant.

Every so often, without looking up, he'd reach across the table and rest two fingers against the side of her mug until the steam stopped being so harshh because she never waited for her tea to cool enough and she always burned her tongue, and then she'd be sad about it for the rest of the morning. If she noticed him do it, she never said. He barely noticed himself. He was too busy trying to spell Heart Kreuz.

Rose lip tint, the new Heart Kreuz one because her old one's discontinued.

Sewing machine. Hers skips too much and said the Fiore Craftsman 900 has a free arm (ask Levy what the hell that is).

Blue dress, shop on Harbour Row. Stopped twice.

Heart-shaped casserole dish. Ceramic. Red one specifically. Market stall on the second Saturday. Picked it up, put it back, said "Juvia doesn't need it."

He underlined that one. Twice.

White coat with the big blue buttons, Magnolia Outfitters window.

Green silk. Fabric shop by the station. Touched it for ages. Asked the price and left.

The lavender wool, same shop. Same thing.

Picture of us from the lake, the one where I'm not looking at the camera. Her favourite one and needs a frame, keeps saying.

Lemon shortbread from the tea room. Strawberry creams. Those chocolate truffles in the gold box, the dark ones, not milk. Pink wafers from the corner shop (cheap, she eats a whole packet).

Rose bath salts. The pink notebook with the ribbon. A proper teapot, hers is cracked. The perfume Mira wears. Hair ribbons, the velvet kind.

Gray sat at the kitchen table one night after she'd gone to bed and added up how much it would cost, and then sat very still for a while.

Then he went to the guild in the morning and took three more jobs off the board.

December was long.

He'd known it would be. He hadn't known it would be like this, back-to-back escort work in Hargeon, a monster clearance up in the northern passes that took four days instead of two, a string of repair-and-reinforcement jobs out in Oak Town that paid well mostly because nobody else wanted them. He came home at odd hours with ice still flaking off his coat. He left before she was up. Twice he didn't come home at all, and he sent a message through the lacrima both times, short and clumsy; job ran long, back tomorrow, don't wait up. Both times he came home to find she'd waited up.

"Are you all right?" she asked him on the third week, when he came in past midnight and sat down on the edge of the bed to unlace his boots and couldn't quite get his fingers to work.

"Yeah."

"You've been working very hard."

"Yeah. Just some good jobs came up."

She was quiet. He could feel her looking at the back of his head.

So he got his boots off quickly and got into bed, pulled her against him, and held on tight. She didn't ask again.

Great, he thought, staring at the ceiling.

I'm never home and can't even tell her why. She's lying here thinking you don't want her, and you're letting her think that. Some boyfriend you are, Gray.

He didn't sleep well that night at all.

He was up at six anyway, before the next job, crouched in front of a wardrobe with a screwdriver, fixing a hinge that had been squeaking since September. She'd complained about it and he'd been meaning to get to it. He oiled it, tested it twice, and then left for Oak Town without mentioning it.

It wasn't anything. It was a hinge.

The storage room below their apartments belonged to Mrs. Harlan on the ground floor, who charged him fifty jewel a week for it and asked no questions, which was exactly what he needed. By Christmas Eve it was so full he had to shoulder the door open.

He waited until Juvia had been asleep for an hour. Then he carried it all up the stairs in the dark, trip after trip, in his socks so he wouldn't wake her and spent until nearly three in the morning sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with rolls of paper and a pair of scissors, wrapping things very badly.

The sewing machine defeated him entirely. He ended up draping a sheet over it and tying a ribbon around the middle. The casserole dish he did three times. The dresses he folded the way the shop girl had shown him, and then unfolded to check they were the right ones, and then couldn't get them folded back, and in the end just laid them in their boxes and hoped.

The frame he wrapped last. He sat for a minute with it in his hands before he did, the photo from the lake in summer. Juvia laughing at something off to the side with her hair blowing across her face, and him next to her, not looking at the camera at all. Looking at her. He hadn't known she'd taken it until she showed him and he hadn't known his face did that.

He wrapped it carefully. He put it at the front.

Then he stood in the doorway with his arms folded and looked at the living room. He had covered one of their couches entirely in colored papers and trickets for her.

Is this too much?

And then, right behind it, is this enough?

He went to bed without answering either before he sent himself insane.

He woke up to screaming and was out of bed, in the hallway with his body preppared for anything that may have hurt or startled her. He stopped, because Juvia was standing in the middle of the living room in her nightdress with both hands over her mouth, and she wasn't hurt, and there was nobody there.

She turned and looked at him. Her eyes were enormous.

"What," she said through her fingers. "What… why?!"

"What?" he asked dumbly.

"Gray-sama. Gray-sama! There's — it's — Juvia can't see the couch!"

He rubbed the back of his neck and came the rest of the way into the room. "Well, I guess Santa paid us a visit," he said and he saw her about to protest. "Start with that one."

He pointed at the front, at the frame.

She sat down on the floor, slowly, like her legs had given up on her, and picked it up. She peeled the paper back one corner at a time. He'd noticed that she never tore wrapping; she saved it so it took forever to unwrap.

Gray took a seat on the arm of the other couch to watch her, his heart hammering in his cheat.

She got the paper off and turned it over. She didn't say anything at all for a second. Her thumb moved over the glass, over the two of them, over his face.

"Juvia said she needed a frame for this," she said finally, very quietly.

"You did." He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders. "You know Santa's always listening.

She looked up at him. He looked at the wall to avoid gicing in.

"Open the next one," he urged.

She opened the next one. And the next.

The lip tint was first, she knew it the second she saw the little heart on the lid and made a sound like a kettle, clutching it to her chest. Then the bath salts, the velvet ribbons, the perfume. She had to stop after the perfume and just breathe for a while. Gray sat down on the arm of the sofa and waited, watching her face every second she opened something.

Then the green silk, and the lavender wool, folded in tissue.

"This is from the shop by the station," she said, and her voice had gone all wobbly. "Gray-sama, this was so expensive, Juvia never… she never even told you about this."

"Well, it's a good thing Santa bought it for you then, isn't it?" He smirked, not giving up on the bit.

Juvia pressed the silk against her face and made a noise into it that he couldn't quite interpret.

The dresses. The white coat, which she put on over her nightdress immediately and refused to take off. The teapot, the pink notebook, the good scissors she'd mentioned wanting for the new fabric, a pin cushion shaped like a strawberry that hadn't been in the notebook at all, he'd just seen it and thought she'd like that, and when she held it up and gasped he felt something in his chest go stupidly smug.

Then the casserole dish.

She knew what it was the second she got the corner off. He could tell because she stopped, completely, with the paper still half on, and stared at the flash of red ceramic underneath.

"Juvia put this back," she whispered.

She took the rest of the paper off. She held it in her lap and her eyes filled up all at once, like a cup overflowing.

"Hey — " Gray started, half off the sofa arm.

"Juvia is fine!" She waved him off with one hand, still holding the dish with the other, tears pouring down. "Juvia is so fine, keep going, she wants to keep going — "

So he kept pointing to good ones, and she kept going.

The sewing machine was last. She pulled the sheet off it and made a sound he'd never heard her make before, a high thin eeeee that went on for several seconds, and put both hands flat on top of it like she was checking it was real.

"This is the Craftsman!" she gasped.

"It's got the free arm too," Gray pointed out, he still didn't know what that was.

"It does," Juvia agreed faintly.

She sat back on her heels in the middle of it all, in her new white coat, with the silk in her lap and the casserole dish beside her knee and wrapping paper drifted up around her like snow and looked at him. For long enough that he started to feel it at the back of his neck.

"Why?" she said.

The real answer sat right there in his mouth. Because I'm a bad boyfriend, and I know it, and I figured the least I could do was one thing right. Because I'm bad at this. Because you give me everything and I give you silence. Because I'm not the kind of person who can just say things like you do, and I know you know that, and I know you've never once made me feel bad about it but I needed to show you I was listening. Even if I'm not good at talking. I'm always listening.

He didn't say any of it.

"It's Christmas," he said instead. "Santa brought you presents."

Her face crumpled.

She launched herself at him from a sitting position, which shouldn't have been physically possible, and hit him square in the chest, and they both went over the arm of the sofa and onto the cushions. Wrapping paper crunched under his back.

And then she was kissing him. His cheek, his jaw, his forehead, the corner of his mouth, his nose, his mouth properly, then his cheek again, fast and wet and salty from crying, murmuring Gray-sama, Gray-sama between every one.

Every day he woke up wanting this. It was probably embarrassing how much. He'd never say it but it was true: the first thing he thought about most mornings, before he'd even opened his eyes, was how long it'd be before she kissed him. Some days he got one at before they got out of bed or at breakfast. Some days not until she got back from a job. On the bad weeks, the long ones when either of them were away on jobs, it was the thing he counted down to.

She pulled back eventually, just a little, still braced on his chest. Her eyes were red and her nose was pink and there was a scrap of gold ribbon stuck in her hair. He reached up and pulled it out.

"Juvia has to tell you something," she said. "And you can't be upset."

His stomach dropped a little. "Okay."

"Juvia thought," She stopped and bit her lip. "Juvia thought this Christmas was going to be a bad one."

He didn't say anything.

"Because of — because it's winter. And Juvia knows winter is hard for you. Juvia knows about Ur, and about your parents, and she knows you get quiet this time of year, and she thought she'll just be there fro whatever you need, and she'll be quiet too if he needs it. Then you started going away and you were gone so much, and you came home so tired, and you wouldn't say anything, and Juvia thought — " Her voice went small. "Juvia thought maybe you didn't want to be here for it with her."

Gray's chest actually physically hurt, like something had closed around it.

"That wasn't — " he started.

"Juvia knows that now!" She sat up a little, gesturing wildly at the room with both hands. "Obviously Juvia knows that now! She's surrounded by it! You were working all those jobs for — " She looked around again, at the whole wrecked, overflowing living room, and he watched it land on her properly, maybe for the first time. The sheer amount of it and what it must have cost.

He looked at the ceiling. "...Well, someone had to give Santa your wishlist, he did all the hard work. I won't take the credit."

She made a noise that was half laugh, half sob, and put her face down on his chest, and he wrapped both arms around her and held on.

"I'm sorry I was gone so much," he said into her hair. It was the most he could get out. It wasn't close to enough but she squeezed him hard, like she'd heard the rest of it anyway.

"Juvia's not sorry," she mumbled. "Juvia's not sorry about anything. This is the best Christmas of Juvia's life."

He didn't say anything back to that. He couldn't have. He just lay there on the crinkling paper and let her be heavy on him, and after a minute she lifted her head and kissed him again, slower this time, and he was back to not counting.

It was nearly an hour before either of them thought about breakfast.

Gray finally peeled himself off the sofa, brushed a strip of tape off his shoulder and headed for the kitchen. He'd got as far as the doorway when Juvia said, very quickly, "wait!"

He stopped and turned. "What?"

She'd scrambled up off the couch and was hurrying toward him with an expression he knew well. It was the expression she wore right before she did something she'd been planning for a long time.

She stopped directly in front of him. Then she looked up, pointedly.

Gray looked up too.

Pinned to the top of the kitchen doorframe, right above his head, was a sprig of mistletoe tied with a red ribbon.

"It's tradition," Juvia said solemnly.

He looked at the mistletoe. He looked at her and saw she was already up on her toes.

He kissed her. It wasn't a peck, either. He wrapped his arms firmly around her and took his time about it, and when he pulled back she was swaying slightly and had to grab his forearms for support.

"When'd you put that up?" he asked against her lips.

"This morning," she said, a bit dazed. "Before Juvia saw the presents. She got up early." She hesitated. "Juvia thought if it was going to be a quiet Christmas, she might need a little help. So she put up a few."

"A few," Gray repeated.

Her eyes darted, just for a second, toward the bedroom.

He followed her glance. There was another sprig above the bedroom door. And another over the bathroom. And when he turned around, there was one hanging from the lamp directly above the middle of the sofa, and a fifth dangling over the front door.

Juvia had gone pink. "Juvia may have been a little strategic to get kisses today."

Gray looked at the five sprigs of mistletoe for a long moment.

Then he walked straight past her into the hallway and stood under the one by the bathroom.

Juvia blinked at him as he did.

He waited.

She made a noise like a teakettle and practically ran at him. He caught her, kissed her, set her back down, and walked to the bedroom door and stood under that one instead.

"Gray-sama!"

He waited again. He folded his arms, leaned on the frame, and raised his eyebrows at her.

She got there faster that time.

By the time he'd gone round all five, the front door last andJuvia was giggling so hard she could barely stand up. He'd been kissed so thoroughly under the lamp by the sofa that he'd briefly forgotten there was a reason he was moving around so much.

He went back to the kitchen to finally start breakfast. Halfway through cracking the eggs, he glanced over his shoulder at the doorway.

Then he wiped his hands on a towel, reached up, and unpinned the sprig from the frame.

"What are you doing?" Juvia said from the table.

He came over and held it above her head.

She stared up at it, then at him. "That's cheating."

"It's still there," Gray said and leaned down.

The pancakes burned slightly but neither of them cared.

He spent the rest of the day making it up to her that he was away so much and worried her. Which was stupid, because she clearly didn't think there was anything to make up for. But he did it anyway.

He made a second batch of pancakes, properly this time, because she liked pancakes, and he put the strawberry creams on top because she'd said once that she'd seen someone do it in a café in Crocus. She ate them in the white coat and the new lip tint and nothing else changed, he watched her do it from across the table with his chin in his hand.

She put on the blue dress for dinner at Lucy's, she came out of the bedroom and did a slow turn in the doorway.

"Well?" she asked shyly.

He opened his mouth to compliment how pretty she looked in it. What came out was, "yeah."

She beamed at him like he'd written her a sonnet.

He helped her fill the new casserole dish with the potato bake she'd promised Lucy and carried it himself, with both hands, all the way across town in the snow, because she'd said the dish was too special to drop and didn't want to take any chances.

She held on to his arm the entire walk. She'd put on a little of the new perfume and he could smell it every time the wind moved. He kept her on the inside of the pavement, away from the moving carts and the snow slush they threw up to protect her new outfit.

Lucy's apartment was already warm and loud when they got there. Natsu was lying across the sofa with Happy on his stomach. Erza was at the table, arranging cake and Levy was in the armchair with her feet up on a cushion,a hand resting on her round belly. Gajeel was perched on the arm of it too while chatting to Natsu.

"You're here!" Lucy took the dish off Gray at the door. "Oh, this is cute!"

"Santa got it for Juvia," Juvia said happily and smiled up at Gray excitedly.

Lucy looked at Gray with a knowing smile before looking back to Juvia. "That's so sweet."

Juvia agreed and swept past her into the living room. "It's so sweet! Juvia wanted it for a long time and she put it back at the market. And Santa got her this dress too," she did a twirl in the middle of the room, and Happy said ooh. "And the perfume she's wearing and this lip tint, and a new sewing machine!"

Every head in the room turned slowly toward Gray, who was still standing by the door taking off his coat and had never in his life wanted to be encased in ice so badly.

"Seriously?" Gajeel asked flatly.

Gray just shrugged, "Santa came to our house, man. I don't know what you want me to say."

Levy made a small squeaking noise at that. Lucy had a hand pressed to her mouth. Gajeel was looking at him like he'd grown a second head..

Gray said nothing. He didn't need to, they all knew why he had done it.

Juvia threw both arms up in the air.

"Ahhh," she wailed happily, to the whole room, "Gray-sama is the best boyfriend ever!"

Gray opened his mouth to keep his bit going.

"He gave Santa her wish list this year!" Her hands were pressed to her blushing cheeks. "He's so kind to Juvia! He walked on the outside of the path so the carts didn't splash her outfit for today. He cools her tea down when she forgets, and he even fixed that wardrobe that sounded weird and he didn't even tell her, she just opened it one morning and it was quiet again! He fixes everything Juvia breaks! He tucks the blanket over her feet in the night because they get cold, every night and he always, always saves her the seat by the fire at the guild — "

"He does do that," Natsu said, aggrieved now and glaring at Gray. "He kicks me out of it. What are we even getting at talking about him?!"

" — and he's so thoughtful every single day, and Juvia loves him so much she wants to give him a million babies!"

Gray didn't hear whatever happened next. Not for a second or two.

He'd heard her say a lot of things about him over the years, big, dramatic, over-the-top thing, and some part of him had always figured they were about a version of him she'd made up in her head, someone better than he actually was.

But this wasn't that guy. This was him she had talked about.

And she wanted all of it. Babies. A million of them, apparently. A whole life, a whole future with him in it, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

HIt hit him that he was actually going to get forever with her.

He actually couldn't believe it. He stood there and tried, and couldn't. It was too big to fit in his chest all of a sudden. He could have this feeling of giving her everything she wanted every single Christmas.

Around him, the room had gone very quiet in a very different way.

"A million, huh?" Lucy said weakly, a bead of sweat sliding down her temple.

Levy had both hands on her stomach. "A... million," she echoed, looking faintly ill.

He didn't think about it. He just went past Natsu's feet, around the table and bent down to kiss Juvia on the cheek, right there in front of all of them.

"Sounds like fun," he said with a smile for her.

Juvia squealed.

It was a sound that probably registered in Hargeon. She grabbed him by the shirt with both fists and yanked him down the rest of the way, arms around his neck, face pressed into his jaw, one hand already in his hair and the other scrabbling at his collar like she was trying to climb inside his sweater. He staggered, caught himself on the back of her chair, and let her. He put one arm around her waist and held on as the others laughed at how ridiculous it was.

They walked home late, through streets gone soft and blue with snow. Juvia had the empty casserole dish tucked under one arm like a treasure and her other arm looped through his. She was humming something under her breath, off-key.

"Gray-sama?" she said, halfway up the hill.

"Mhm."

"Juvia just — " She stopped walking, and so did he. She looked up at him. "All the fun aside, Juvia never knew you were listening all that time. She knows she talks so much and she thought most of it just went past you, and that was all right! That was fine. Juvia just likes talking to you." She squeezed his arm. "But you were keeping it."

Gray looked at her for a long moment.

He still couldn't say it, not the whole thing. Maybe he never would.

But he bent down and kissed her in the snow, with the casserole dish squashed between them and she made a surprised little sound against his mouth and then melted into it, and her free hand came up to hold on to his jacket collar.

When he pulled back she was pink all the way to her ears.

"That's kiss number forty-three today," she said breathlessly.

He stared at her. "You were counting?"

"Weren't you?" She giggled.

He wasn't going to answer that. He took her hand instead, and they started walking again. She laughed about nothing and swung their joined hands between them.