TITLE: running with the stars in our eyes
GENRE: romance, drama(?)
WORD COUNT: 3637
NOTE: heavily influenced by the birdcage manor series—
heavily recommend it!
like seriouslyyyY…
sorry if it's ooc, but well— yeAH ugh life uh... but please note that juvia isn't going to be all fangirly in this fic!
always wanted to write for ft IDK WHY IT'S SO... angst uh and UGH GRUVIA IS MY OTP BUT WHY IS THIS SAD yah my life
ft charas are five thousand percent hard and it makes me salty so jjaj
rating may go up to m, but... for now.
running w. the
stars
in our
e
y
e
s
—
part un / / / / hell bound.
i.
.
"— so, I found you another model," Lyon tells him casually as he leans against the back of his chair, his bleached hair sticking up in all directions, his dark eyes glittering vaguely under dim, cheap fluorescent lights.
He grunts, twin black eyes staring back. "Who?"
All his cousin has ever been is sly and an asshole. "— just some street brave girl."
.
ii.
.
When he first meets her, he's just kinda pissed, partly because he got woken up way too early, mostly because Lyon's an absolute first-class ass, and that's just how their relationship runs.
She's short and skinny and mouths off at him. Her dark eyes flash, she's covered in harsh scratches, and her hair is a deep blue and hacked off at the edges. She's a greedy little kid at seventeen, and it makes him squint, because like hell he'd need an immature girl like her to model for a stubborn ass of an artist like him.
Really, what does Lyon see in a brat like this?
Eventually, he sees her face, her eyes, her hair, and it's all the same (and aren't they all?), and he sighs; he knows exactly what Lyon sees. Her eyes are still rough around the edges, but she crouches protectively around a kitten, her arms tense, and he sees it all, he gets it all— it doesn't mean he has to like it.
When Lyon tells him her name, all it does is roll around in his head uncomfortably; it's not the name he expects, and still, five and a half years later, he's not ready.
"— Juvia Lockser."
He sighs.
If anything, she's just another replacement in a long line of girls with fragile, fragile hearts.
(Nobody will ever be good enough.)
.
iii.
.
Lyon smiles halfheartedly.
"I've got a knack for finding girls like her, ya know?"
The door slams in his face.
.
iv.
.
The second time he meets her, he's forgotten her name as it slipped deep within the cracks of his psyche, and she's battered and rough all around the edges.
Her brow is furrowed and angry and sharp, and her fingers dig into her palm. There's blood on her knees and cuts on her cheek and bruises everywhere, and all she's ever been is a street brave girl. Her blue hair is matted with dirt, and she smells suspiciously like cheap cologne, aftershave, and dirty money.
She stares at her knees in silence as they trudge down the road to an old and battered apartment building; it is eerily pretty and elegant and all too ugly at the same time. He glances back, sees the ugly gashes across her arms, the silent, unshed tears, the coins that glitter like gold and spill between her fingers, her ugly bruises and—
— it comes out spur of the moment; the raw emotion flashes across her face, and she's like an open book. He can see the suspicion that tinges the edges of her eyes, and if anything, it's a testament to— to something.
"— a model," he mutters, "should take better care of her body."
Her brow creases suddenly at his subtle insinuation, and he watches bemusedly as she grits her teeth, a subtle glare making its way to her eyes, and there's not even a twinge of grace or thanks in her eyes, and it sets something like a fire to his veins. Her eyes meet his as if gauging him, measuring him for what he's worth.
She's got a short fuse, he muses, when she starts shrieking things about not being his model and whatnot (and wow, not like he cares); she's clumsy and tired, she trips and falls, he catches her, and it's all like a flash to the past. She purses her lips, and her hair, though hacked off and angry, is soft against his arms.
She's nothing like her, but her voice is soft and pretty and an octave too high. She's tired, this girl, and he doesn't know what it's supposed to mean to a guy who's still living and breathing in his past.
"I guess... I could model for you," she murmurs reluctantly as she snatches herself away from him again, her shoulders small against the entire world. He still doesn't know her name, and he doesn't bother to ask.
All it does is make his smile crooked and broken.
"Then," he says as he backs away, "I'll see you tomorrow night... at nine."
.
v.
.
The first time she knocks on his door, she does it over and over and over. He opens it, his feet dragging across the floor; she looks almost startled when the door suddenly swings open, her knuckles in mid-knock. Her dark blue eyes are wide as she peers behind him curiously, already on her tiptoes, her mouth slightly open.
He glances at the bandages taped across her face and says nothing.
Juvia Lockser is a girl whose bare feet dance across the cracked wood of his floor. She breathes in the smell of oil pants and touches a paper city plastered across the wall and she models like a girl he used to think he knew.
He remarks lazily in reply as she huffs harshly back at him, her back stiff, looking half embarrassed and all too strangely human in his apartment, surrounded by harsh edges and rough lines. Her awestruck eyes bother him, because they're full of stars and life and—
He pauses, stops, and she flinches, stares.
"What?" she asks skittishly, her teeth flashing between her lips. "— am I... doing it wrong?"
He twists the brush between his fingers; perhaps the problem lies in that she's not doing it wrong. His eyes stare back safely at a blank canvas. "No, that's good."
Her eyes are still pools of deep blue and living and everything he's ever wanted some other girl to be.
Juvia Lockser sits down and lays across her knees, and she breathes.
.
vi.
.
"You're not going to ask me for my name?"
He sees his own sad, sad reflection in her eyes, and maybe its destiny they share the same fate— a curse of sadness, of always seeing something that doesn't exist anymore, of being broken. He's not sure if she sees it.
His fingers are calloused when she reaches over and touches his hand lightly, and she's surprisingly gentle and fragile as he sees her out; she doesn't smile, but he believes this unfamiliar girl has see-through eyes. The light of the hallway glows against her back, and he can see her bones.
"Juvia Lockser."
He offers a half-hearted smile, and a silent agreement is struck—
— of what, he's still not sure.
Her skin is deceptively soft, her eyes deceptively naïve, and everything is cleverly broken.
"Gray— Gray Fullbuster."
.
vii.
.
His name slips out between her lips like smoke.
.
viii.
.
The days all roll together. She's scrawny when he paints her, but her legs have soft, subtle curves, and her elbow bends gently, and she's art on a canvas. Her fingers brush against the walls, trace the city that sprawls across his walls, and she hums soft, delicate songs that fill the air and leak into his closed ears desperately, as if attempting to fill in the cracks between the lines.
Problem is, it's not really her he's looking at; he thinks about it and realizes it's never been a problem in the end.
Juvia Lockser has a sharp tongue, but there are brief glimpses of times when everything is nearly perfect, and everything is nearly the same. Maybe it's the pose, maybe it's the light, maybe it's just her, but it's just right.
For a moment, she's not Juvia Lockser— she's a girl who only breathes in his memories, a girl who only exists within paper thin edges.
She may not be the girl, but she's amusing, and it'll have to be good enough until the next one.
.
ix.
.
The first day she points out Mikey Chuck, a boy painted within the deep intricacies of a city crawling with lines and roads and cities and buildings, a boy with a red hat and a striped shirt, it scares him. It's an ordinary day, one where she balances on her toes along the cracks of his floorboards, one where her fingers dip into cool bed sheets as she stares at the ceiling.
"Hey, Mikey Chuck," she murmurs under her breath, her fingertips brushing along the small baseball cap. She blinks as if startled when all she feels is wall, her thick eyelashes brushing against her cheek.
His grip on the paintbrush hardens.
The silence grows long and thin. It's too much, he thinks; just a few weeks into the job, and this girl is a little bit different and all too familiar.
It could just be the fact that she isn't professional, or the fact that she's only seventeen, but her eyes always grow soft as they slide across the fake horizons of some old paper city— it's as if she knows. Some part of him wouldn't be surprised.
"You know," she says aloud, her voice soft as it creeps over his canvas, "I like this painted city of yours."
"... mm."
He can already imagine the roll of her eyes; the bed sheets shift, and the bed creaks as she moves. He can just barely make out the blue in her eyes as he turns around and brushes soft bristles into wet paint.
"Yeah," she murmurs thoughtfully, "reminds me of something you're missing, these days."
.
x.
.
They've fallen into a routine, of sorts.
The job starts off when Juvia stalks inside, the click of the lock behind her, the muggy scent of the city clinging to her clothes. She's always a little loud with the tinge of an edge around her, the heels of her shoes clacking against his floor, but her voice is always startling soft and rounded around the corners as she hums lightly. There's always the rustle of plastics, and when she comes closer, he can smell the grease on her skin.
He wrinkles his nose as she bops him on the head. "Don't be a kid; you need to eat," she scolds as she shoves cold noodles at him. His eyes darken at the deep gashes along her arms, and without batting an eyelash, she lowers her sleeve and persists with a silky sweet smile.
"I'm not paying you to get me food," he retorts sulkily as they graze over the situation, his eyes twitching towards black coffee. She grabs chopsticks and slams them into his hand as she turns on her heel.
He ignores her mumbles of him being an "ungrateful bastard."
"No," she agrees with a subtle snort. Her fingertips reach for the buckle of her boot, and he has trouble multitasking half-assed eating and attempting to start to sketch— he can already see her eyes roll.
Her clunky boots come off first, sliding to the floor as she makes her way towards the bed. She takes off her clothes quickly, slipping them to the floor as her arms carefully wound themselves around her chest. She lands with a gentle thump against scratchy, warm blankets, her eyes tracing the room. She glares at him when she realizes he's staring, and he slurps noodles in reply.
"— all you do is pay me to strip."
He supposes the pervert part is implied, these days, but it doesn't stop his smile from curling.
.
xi.
.
He takes a singular long drag from his cigarette one day, a lazy breath of smoke circling out of his mouth and through the window. Juvia blinks drowsily from her position on the bed, the magazine upside down across her chest.
"I didn't know you smoked," she remarks, blinking startlingly blue eyes at him. He shrugs, takes a second, a third, a fourth, and all he ever tries to do is breathe his ghosts through the window.
"Have been for awhile," he replies. She stands up delicately, her toes tiptoeing across the floor as she glides up to the window next to him. Her arms sprawl across the window sill leisurely as she picks away at the old, cracked white paint. He grabs a sheet and drapes it around her pale, bare shoulders, and their fingers brush as she takes it from him, and he pulls away hastily.
If she notices, Juvia doesn't say anything, and he's never expected her to.
"That'll wreck your lungs," she remarks lightly instead whilst waggling her fingertip; he grunts, and she sticks her tongue out at him childishly. Her blue hair, now down to her shoulders, waves in the breeze, and the smoke curls around her.
With small fingers, she suddenly plucks the cigarette out of his mouth, and he stares as she almost deliberately places it between her lips. She takes a single long drag, the puff of smoke leaving a hazy path as she blows it through her lips like a whisper, like a dream.
Privately, he wonders what her ghosts are; he never asks, and she never tells.
"That'll wreck your lungs," he mocks her.
Her grin is crooked, teeth bared between pretty lips, the cigarette pinched between slim fingers, cocked like a gun; all she's ever been is dangerous.
"— I'm already wrecked."
.
xii.
.
There's only a single moment when he sees her as vulnerable. Her eyes are glassy when she focuses on the city walls, and she grazes her fingertip against a building with flashy lights and cheap dreams that drown under shower curtains and dusty sheets drunk on fake love and money, money, money, and when she meets his eyes, her smile is small and weak and a secret all in one.
He doesn't ask, but Juvia's perceptive, and she arches a slim brow in reply. She falls back onto the bed, her fingertip drawing far, far away from the building on the wall, her eyes closed, and her pale legs flash under dim lights as she stretches them skywards.
"Aren't you going to ask?" she says aloud as she curls her back, her bones popping. She doesn't turn towards him like he expects, but the weight of her cold, dark blue eyes persists. He raises a brow back at her as he follows the shallow curve of her knee.
"Do you want me to?"
Juvia's smile is vaguely amused but all too sad, and she never answers.
.
xiii.
.
"You're using me, aren't you?" she asks one day out of the blue, her hair a stark contrast against starchy white sheets. He can feel her cold eyes through the canvas, but he can't sense any anger or sadness or disappointment or regret— his eyes swell up to meet hers, and she has a shallow smile resting on her lips.
"Aren't we both," he answers, his eyes closing, and it isn't a question.
Juvia has misty eyes as she turns back to the ceiling, her eyelids fluttering closed in half agreement.
"... are you calling me broken?" she accuses just minutes later after tumultuous silence, but there's no bite to it. He snorts in reply, and she laughs.
"Are you?" he flashes back, the words slipping out almost carelessly. She freezes, her shoulders stiff, the silence deafening, and Juvia's blue eyes, see-through and all too aware of it all, and all too strangely delicate, like a string about to snap, stare at him as if he's insane.
"Of course I am," she murmurs, her voice amused, but her eyes all too cold, "isn't it obvious?"
It is, his mind hums as he bites his tongue, but it's not my place to say.
Juvia smirks, her lips pulling.
"— hypocrite."
.
xiv.
.
He always tries to get her to leave before she falls asleep; it never works, and she sleeps like the dead and looks like a child.
Honestly, Juvia falls asleep half the time anyway when she models. Most of the time he whaps her on the head with his canvas, but sometimes he brushes his fingertips over her shoulders, the gesture strangely familiar as he throws a blanket over her.
She breathes gently, her hair wispy over her forehead, and she talks in her sleep. It's something along the lines of chocolate, cake, ice cream, and parfaits, and she's definitely drooling along the way.
It's all very unattractive, really.
In times like these, he remembers that Juvia's only seventeen, and she's not supposed to be broken the way she is.
When he wakes up the next morning with a canvas as his pillow, the blanket is thrown across the room, she's sprawled across the floor, snoring and drooling, and all he does is crack a smile.
.
xv.
.
Juvia's pretty in an unconventional way.
He sees it in the shallow waves of her hair, in the long lashes that shadow her cheeks, in the brilliant blues that stares into him and the ghosts that haunt him.
She smiles at him, and he looks away.
.
xvi.
.
Juvia's a quiet girl that brings him food nearly everyday, and when she doesn't, she throws a bag of chips at his face, smirking triumphantly when it smacks him across the face. Even so, she's gentle when she handles him, her eyes tracing him and his broken, broken walls— they dance around each other as if it could fix something.
As if they needed fixing.
She argues with Lyon occasionally, the voices echoing against usually silent walls. She's unconventional in the most ironic of ways, she snores and drools in his room at two o'clock, and she makes his room smell less like acrylic paints and more like a bakery shop.
Juvia smells like the city, grease, smoke, and a little like vanilla; these days, the smell of oil paints cling to her clothes, to her skin.
He grabs at her collar just as she's about to lunge for some cake, and she groans as he yanks her back to the bed. Lyon babies her, dangling the piece teasingly in front of her. She bites down hard on his thumb; Lyon yelps like a girl, and Juvia smiles as she apologizes, her eyes mischievous.
They're bantering, it's too damn noisy in his apartment, and Juvia Lockser is laughing; there are days when he wonders.
He's still not sure what it means.
.
xvii.
.
The lock opens with a loud clatter, the door slamming open, and she runs inside, her stilettos clacking off at the entrance. Juvia brings in the smell of cheap, dank perfume, her hair reckless, her chapstick smeared against her pale cheek, her short dress riding up her thigh dangerously, and there's blood trickling; somewhere in the mess, she smells like vanilla and oil pants, and it suffocates them both.
Juvia stops, her eyes wild, and she's panting, and it takes her nearly four minutes before she can finally settle down without her hands shaking.
"— sorry I'm late," she finally says shortly as she shakes her blue hair out of her face, her eyelashes clinging to the edges as she attempts to blow them away. He stares at her lazily, his eyes appraising her; it isn't the first time, and he expects it won't be the last, either. He's never asked, and she doesn't expect him to.
In the day, Juvia Lockser is just a girl— a seventeen year old girl who's only cracked around the edges, the pieces tacked together with extra tape. In the night, when he can't see her, Juvia Lockser turns old, and she's not just cracked— she's lost all the pieces.
He tosses her some gauze and antibiotics, and she glares at him for a moment; she deflates as he settles it around her cuts, her fingers still trembling as she curls them into his sheets. Juvia's eyes search his for a moment, and she shivers as she looks away, biting her lip. "Can I... sleep here?"
"Yeah," he says with a shrug.
"..."
"..."
"... are you going to ask?"
"You're so stupid," he answers tersely. Juvia doesn't answer, and for the first time, he realizes he's found a girl who's just as broken as him. She stares at him earnestly as she tucks a hair behind her ear, her eyes tracing their way down his face.
"Desperate," she eventually corrects him, and he doesn't bother to reply.
.
xviii.
.
Her thin legs dangle off the bed, her fingers brushing against tired eyelids. His white button-up swallows her, the collar sweeping her chin, and it's almost horrifying how it's longer than her dress that's thrown off somewhere on his floor. "You're still awake?"
He nods noncommittally, the paints smeared against the palm of his hand and all over his light grey button-up shirt, his thumb tracing the edges of the canvas in front of him. He gropes around for a watch, and three fifty AM glares back at him. He curses vaguely under his breath as he exhales.
He needs a smoke.
Her dark blue eyes stare into him, boring into his wrinkled shirt collar; they haunt him more than anything else. He's not expecting it when she says it, and it's a little like déjà vu and a sucker punch to the heart. Juvia has a vague, gentle sort of smile, and it's, it's as if she knows, as if she knows,
"— you're... something else, Gray."
All her eyes ever seem to be is a conspiracy theory.
.
TBC.
although definitely inspired by the residents of birdcage manor, it won't exactly be like it, so yeah!
if you've read it you can probably see the parallels though.
i'm awfully sorry if they're ooc,
but i had far too much fun writing this.
i hope ya liked it- i update slow tho lawl
i destroyed these people sorry
xxx.