A/N This is dedicated to one of the best people in my life and biggest influencers! Thank you and love you Momo Cicerone aka my papa
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She collects love from strangers slowly, picking it like flowers and gathering them softly in her basket.
She saves and saves, hoping to fill herself up enough to keep her happy.
She can suddenly feel the sags under her eyes and the heaviness of her heart when a sharp knock interrupts the silence of her dark apartment.
There's a creak of the door and a perfect, absolutely dopey smile to greet her own tired frown and blurry eyes.
His lips are on hers before she can blink and she melts into him in the most cliché way possible before grasping onto his coat and dragging him in, spending her love so carelessly that she worked so hard to hoard.
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He's convinced she's a perfect cup of tea, warm enough to keep the chill off from biting at his skin and soothe any bump in his throat.
She knows that she's a cold cup of coffee left out that someone accidently spilled whiskey into, slowly turning bitter and bitter as the tang takes over the cream and sugar attempting to keep the dark out.
'
When he leaves breakfast out for her with a small note saying 'good morning, I love you' She dumps the coffee out into the sink and washes her face, the walls closing in on her as she holds the crumpled up note in her sweaty hand.
She feels stuck in some sort of going and going obstacle, her hands pounding on the glass trying to get out before she suffocates. She never knew if anyone could say those three words to her and she wonders why she never feels the words crawling up her throat to say back him.
She flinches when she understands that she let him get too close and gave him the wrong idea and she just knows that it's all her fault because it was so nice to feel arms that shook around her, trembling from her own touch for once.
She had become addicted like a drug, hooking and distracting her with heartfelt words and sincere eyes, working his way into her world unceremoniously.
It's sad really, and she feels horrible, guilt carrying through her body and dragging her down till she's laying on her bedroom floor in a disarray of everything of his that's littering her apartment, wondering how the hell he managed to smuggle in half of his belonging into her tiny home.
She's calm while she folds the soft sweaters neatly and stuffs them into a bag, taking her time to make sure every little damn thing he ever left there won't ever be back.
There's a moment, a split second before she closes her door on his stuff when she stops, swallowing thickly and setting her eyes on the bags haunting her from their place on the floor.
A beat passes before she's pulling out the creased note with his scrawled handwriting and reading it over and over, her eyes memorizing each flick of the pen before setting atop of one of the bags and slamming the door shut.
'
Later that night she opens the door to find the note on the ground, the bags nowhere to be seen.
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Before she can notice, she finds bits and pieces of him in the clouds of people she ends up with at the end of the night.
The light grey flecks in the eyes roving over her body while she dances,
The color of the lips brushing over her neck in a strange bed,
The mess of black hair tickling her forehead as a deep voice talks but she misses the words,
It all screams him and maybe that's why she chooses them, to find comfort by grasping onto the one tiny detail that she can pick out from the rest.
And then she feels sick.
She shouldn't want to push them away as soon as she realizes that it isn't him and it won't ever be.
But she pulls them back in and hopes that maybe she can gather just a small spark from where she burnt out.
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His kisses always caught her on fire.
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Lucy is a miracle; no questions asked when Juvia shows up to her apartment at 2 am, letting herself in with her own key and crawling into bed with the sleeping blonde.
She wakes up to chaos.
Black leather and blue curls strewn around, combat boots thrown on the floor and an unsettling pack of cigarettes on the side table.
She's Juvia's rock, a quick diversion of the certain gloom that will soon tumble down to latch onto her. She's just like her, except different in every way possible and it's something Juvia can't quite explain.
Lucy says their jagged pieces have been cracked so much they've somehow found a way to mash each other's sides together, but Juvia doesn't think a girl like Lucy could ever be broken.
But then again, she knows how easy it is to fake a smile and pretend that nothing's wrong with you.
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"It's cool being liked by someone who hates everyone."
Lucy casually mentions one night with a shrug before stuffing a fry into her mouth and swinging her leg from her seat on the bridge.
"Who ever said anything about liking you blondie?" Juvia bites back and steals one of the greasy sticks from the bag while she fights off the grin forming on her face.
Silence washes over them comfortably as the cold wind pushes into the skin of her cheeks and fingers and she begins to think back to her even colder bed and how warm he would leave it for her.
Like she read her mind, Lucy's small hand finds her thigh before concerned brown eyes find hers.
"Have you thought about maybe just talking-"
"yes."
"Are you going to?"
"No."
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When she finally sees him again for the first time in months, he looks like complete and utter shit and her heart drops knowing that she's most likely the reason he's like that.
She decides to gamble and bets on the fact that she's probably just being selfish with her feelings and that he probably moved on while she slips past him when he crosses the street, unbeknownst to her presence.
Probably.
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But he'd know that shade of blue anywhere.
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When its Lucy's birthday and she drags her to a club with all her friends the last person she expects to see seated next to Natsu is Gray Surge and it takes all of her own self discipline to not walk out right there and then.
She chooses to ignore his existence instead and dance with the guy with green eyes and curly hair, drinking all the glasses dry that he brings her.
She finally feels the warm hand grasp around her arm and pull her into the warm night while rolling her eyes wondering what took him so long.
For the first time in what felt like forever, she meest his tired dark eyes while his teeth chews on his chapped lips nervously and she feels stomach twisting in the obvious pain he was feeling.
"A-are you cold Juvia-Chan?"
Before she can answer, a jacket is being pulled around her form and she can smell everything she scrubbed from her memory all at once and she has to choke back a sob when his hands find hers and he dips his head till their foreheads touch.
"Gray…" She whispers while his head shakes and she can feel him breaking under her fingertips, a mess she knows she won't be able to clean up afterwards.
"You…you tried to love me, right?" The break in his voice is so clear, so evident and it crushes her.
His head lifts and she falters under his hard, accusing gaze and swallows before pulling an arm over herself. She finds herself lost in his pleading look before he squeezes his eyes shut and slowly pulls himself from her.
"Because if you didn't…at least try, then I don't think I can do this anymore Juvia-chan."
She lets out a dry, shattered laugh and hurriedly wipes a delicate finger under her eye, the ghost of a tear drying into her skin.
He smiles and nods, turning his body to face away from her and she feels her whole world ready to collapse under her feet.
Her mind is swarming and she's so ready to say something, anything to get him to come back to her and stay.
'I love you and I want to be with you – but you have a huge, unrealistic expectation of me and I'm not sure I can be that for you.'
It's all at the tip of her tongue but she's hesitating and she feels too exposed and she knows her walls are going up again.
She opens her mouth to speak but he beats her too it while she fumbles for a cigarette and lights it before taking a long drag, her hands quivering.
"I met someone."
His voice is icy and brittle and she jumps at the poison laced with his words.
The wobbly voice she replies in makes her nose scrunch in disgust and she feels so vulnerable under his impending quietness.
"O-oh did you?"
"She's a complete opposite from you."
"So, you love her or something?" She scoffs out a laugh, smoke invading the air around them while he shifts uncomfortably before turning to face her once again.
"Well she's funny, makes me laugh and forget about all the bad."
She cheeks heated up in embarrassment while she takes another puff, sliding it between her teeth and watching the damaged boy a few feet away from her.
"But do you love her?" She demanded softly knowing that one little teeny tiny yes could shatter her completely.
"She smells like sunshine and her kisses are soft like clouds, I could hold her all day."
"Surge, do you fucking love her or not?"
He didn't answer at all that time, just dropped his hand to his side and let out a deep sigh, slanting his eyes to meet her frantic ones.
"How could I love her when I am so completely, utterly, and stupidly in love with you."
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She didn't see him for a while after that and the jacket stayed on her shoulders in the chilly mornings.
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She seemed to find herself at the bar more and more, sucking each drink down after the other.
She was in heaven when her mind became dizzy as the alcohol slid and burned down her throat.
She always thought he was a drug, but he made her horribly wasted, and even if she didn't want to admit it, he had made her so drunk that she could barely walk without support.
His mouth had set her nerves on fire and his cold hands left her legs shaking.
The only time she had felt at home was in his arms, so she drank enough that the fingers trailing down her sides or through the wisps of her hair at the end of the night felt exactly like his.
On a particular warm night- she was already sloppy and gone when she reached the club, tangling between other people like her with full of warm smiles and empty eyes.
People kept asking:
"Where do you want to go?"
"Are you with someone?"
"You need someone to come get you miss."
"You need to go home."
Home.
She couldn't go home.
Her home was out on a journey without her.
He was her home after all.
Her home could never be a place, it was a person.
A person who had been there all along.
He was someone who had chipped through her thick wall and forced himself through and now he was gone because she was used up and sad and he was perfect.
He had loved her and she didn't know why, all she knew was that she had retaliated and pretended not to care that somebody in this godforsaken world might actually give a damn about her.
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She pulled out her phone from her purse and shook up the security guard that pulled her outside and onto the empty street.
She unlocked her screen and focused her blurry eyes on the time.
4:13 A.M.
She clumsily scowled till she found his contact, clicked it and held it to her ear, listening as the line rang and her heart raced.
"Hello?" His groggy voice filled her ear like it had when he woke her on early mornings and just like that, she felt at home.
"Good morning…" She slurred and raised her head to the dark sky. "I love you."