A/N: This is my first Fairy Tail fic, and my first vampire fic. Two birds with one stone!
Tentative update schedule is every Sunday, depending on how often I am able to work on this.
Waiting between your breaths
Lives a silent shadow.
I shoved the papers, covered in red strikethroughs and corrections, off to the side of my tiny desk. Stretching my fingers wide, I leaned back in the rickety chair and tried to pop the stiffness out of my spine and shoulders.
"Cap, I'm done!" I called into one of the interior offices, and my supervisor walked out of it, an empty mug dangling from one of his large hands.
"Tha-a-at was quick, Lucy," he commented, the peculiarity of his speech skipping like a heartbeat over the vowels.
He slid the draft over toward the edge of the table and gave it a once over, his eyes behind the ever-present sunglasses skimming over the lines. After about fifteen seconds, he tucked the papers under his arm—the one not twirling the mug—and gave me a sharp glance.
"Angling for a promotion?" he inquired, the barest hint of sarcasm making its way into his voice.
I offered a half-hearted chuckle.
"Like that'll ever happen."
Cap gave a disbelieving harrumph—almost a bleat, in my opinion—and turned away from my desk to stride back into his office. He called back:
"At the rate you're going, I wouldn't be too surprised."
I felt my eyebrows disappear into my hair. In my opinion, I had been lucky enough to even be hired—and considering the name of the magazine—Love & Lucky—the irony wasn't lost on me.
I caught the eyes of Ari and Loke, who shared the office space with me, and felt my face flush as they grinned. Loke tried to adopt a sultry expression, drawing his eyebrows low over his half-lidded eyes and resting his chin on three fingers. I just thought he looked slightly constipated.
"You're going to move up in the world," he purred. I turned away from him and rolled my eyes at Ari, who giggled and then immediately looked apologetic.
"Right now I'll be content to move out of this chair and get back home," I said, straightening myself from a sitting position and hearing all sorts of pops and snaps as my joints complained.
"See you tomorrow, Lucy," Ari said in her sweet voice, turning back to the reams of notes at her desk.
"Can't I walk you home?" Loke appeared at my elbow, making me nearly jump out of my skin with his sudden appearance.
"Don't you have three hundred more words due tonight?" I shot at him, scooting myself away to increase the space between our bodies.
He shrugged, but returned to his desk with a glance that seemed to say, "Your loss."
I piled my notebooks into a stack and slid them into my bag, nodding to my coworkers as I left the room. I gave Cap a wave as I passed his office, and called a brief farewell to Cancer and Virgo, the style and fashion columnists who were deeply immersed in analyzing whatever bizarre trend Love & Lucky would advocate in its next issue. Approaching the last office before the exit, I spooled up my courage before knocking softly three times on the frame of the open door.
"See you tomorrow, ma'am!"
Aquarius—the managing editor—was on the phone, most likely with her boyfriend, so I was spared from anything harsher than a dismissive wave and a scowl. Thanking the stars, I rocketed out the door before she had a chance to berate me for interrupting her.
The nondescript office of Love & Lucky was sandwiched between a foundering consignment shop and a store that seemed to sell an odd combination of trick candles and antique furniture. In the four blocks between the magazine's office and my house, the novelty stores and slightly more mainstream businesses gave way to mid-level apartment buildings. This was the direction I angled my steps after pausing for a few moments, just to enjoy the evening sunshine as it touched my face. Something about spending approximately ten hours balancing on a wobbly chair in a dark office made me feel like my skin didn't get enough light.
It took me barely seven minutes to walk back to my apartment, its proximity being one of the few conveniences of working at one of the smallest, most unfortunately eclectic magazines in the city of Magnolia. The entry-level job let me scrape by with rent, food, and pennies left over for luxuries. But that would all change when my first novel hit the market.
I was busy plotting the next chapter's outline in my head when I twisted the key in the apartment door. I was itching to put my ideas to paper, but the instant the door opened I knew it was a lost cause.
The room, usually neatly arranged, was topsy-turvy with three-quarters of the contents of my roommate's wardrobe. And mine, too, incidentally.
"Juvia, why are my clothes all over the living room floor?"
I didn't get an answer; she was too busy pawing through the stacks of clothes on the floor, muttering something incoherent and urgent under her breath. She didn't even look up to say hello to me. Levy, my other roommate, made her way across the room by agilely hopping between the piles of clothes.
"Date."
Her one word explanation told me nearly everything.
"Gray?" I asked.
Juvia's head snapped up at the mention of the name, and her eyes positively sparkled.
"Juvia and Gray-sama are going to dinner tonight! For the second time!"
She dropped the shirt she was holding—which happened to be mine—and clasped her hands together, lost in a beautiful vision that I was sure would make me gag if I could see it in reality.
"Does it need to be in my clothes?" I huffed, scooping up a skirt and two more shirts from the floor before they got wrinkled.
"Juvia went through all the things in her closet, but nothing seemed quite right," she responded, twitching a lock of curling blue hair out of her face before diving into the next pile.
"I would have offered, but we wear totally different sizes," Levy explained, gesturing ruefully at her own slight frame.
To no one's surprise, Erza walked into the room from the kitchen, where she had obviously been helping herself to the contents of our refrigerator.
"Apparently my fashion choices do not interest Juvia, or I would have been happy to lend anything necessary," she enunciated around a sandwich.
Erza Scarlet lived across the hall from the apartment I shared with Juvia Lockser and Levy McGarden, but she might as well have lived with us for all the time she spent crashing at our place, napping in one of our beds, and eating our food. We would never have kicked her out, though: the first reason being she was scary as hell, and the second was that we really did enjoy her company. She could be overbearing and bossy, but most of the time she acted like our sweet, fiercely protective older sister.
I sighed, resigning myself to an evening of zero productivity, and started gathering articles of my rejected wardrobe to put back in their place. Juvia had finally settled on something to wear—which came out of her own closet, thank goodness. She danced off to change, and Levy joined me in trying to clean the mess off the floor.
"Well, I'm happy she's happy," Levy said, looking towards the door of Juvia's bedroom.
I had to agree. For the last six months, Levy and I, and occasionally Erza, rode the wild rollercoaster of Juvia's obsession with Gray Fullbuster, the handsome lifeguard at the gymnasium and pool where Juvia worked as a swimming instructor. Just a few days ago, her relentless pursuit had finally paid off, resulting in their first official date. The rest of us had yet to meet the supposed dreamboat, but I was hugely looking forward to seeing what kind of guy would be able to withstand Juvia's intense affection.
At that moment, Erza's handheld radio began snapping and crackling, and she jerked it out of the belt at her waist with annoyance.
"Dammit," she muttered, listening to the unintelligible codes someone started rattling off.
"Have to go?" Levy queried, balancing on her knees with an armful of garments.
"Yes."
Erza snapped some instructions into her own radio and stepped quickly towards the door.
"A possible break-in nearby. Nothing too serious."
Levy and I exchanged amused looks listening to the confidence in her voice. Erza could handle an entire posse of robbers without calling for any backup, or possibly even breaking a sweat.
"See you later!" I called after her as she left the door swinging, already in a full sprint down the hallway.
Juvia came out of her room, glancing in confusion at the open door.
"Erza had to go—police stuff," I filled her in.
"When do you meet Gray?" Levy asked, and Juvia got that starry, faraway look again. It rapidly dissolved into an expression of panic as her eyes fell on the wall clock.
"In—twenty minutes! Juvia must have spent too long looking for what to wear!"
"Here," I threw her purse at her, and she caught it effortlessly, already thrusting her feet into her shoes.
"Are you gonna be okay? It's getting a little dark out there," Levy asked with concern, and I followed her gaze out the window. It was summer, so the sun was still well above the horizon, but the beams of light through the window were pinked with the first hint of sunset.
"Juvia will be careful. And she will be with Gray-sama."
"Just as long as you stay on well-lit, busy streets, okay?"
She fluttered her fingers at us while heading for the door, evidently not at all bothered.
"Juvia promises to be safe!"
Levy and I smiled at each other as the door clicked closed behind our roommate. "One-track mind" just didn't seem to cover it.
After a short period of concentrated effort, the floor of the apartment was nearly clean again, and I was starting to regain hope that I could get some writing done before it got too late. After putting the last of the clothes into Juvia's closet, Levy yawned impressively and gave a longing glance to her own bedroom, even though the clock had barely struck eight in the evening.
"I had the earliest shift at the library today, so I think I'm going to try and get to sleep early tonight. You getting ready to write, Lu?"
"I wanted to, before I saw that Erza was here and Juvia had managed to redecorate the place with her closet," I replied, then looked around and shrugged.
"Everything seems quiet enough now, though."
Levy grinned, then her face split in another yawn, and I shooed her into her room to get some sleep. After the door shut behind her, I made my way to the kitchen in search of tea and something with a little more sustenance.
As I passed the window that looked out onto the street below, something streaked across the sky outside, sending a shadowy silhouette rippling across the floor. It had been too big for a bird. A glance outside the window and down to the ground level told me nothing had fallen from one of the upper floors.
I wasn't prone to superstition or over-caution, but a preternatural chill streaked down my spine and I fought to keep myself from going to wake Levy up. It couldn't have been…
No—absolutely not. I was being paranoid and nervous. Shaking myself, I took a firm step back from the window and turned away from the evening dusk gathering outside of it.
It couldn't have been what I thought. No one saw any of those in the daylight. Even at nighttime, they kept to themselves, and far, far away from respectable, inhabited neighborhoods like the one I lived in. I had imagined the shadow.
Still, I made sure the window was locked before going into the kitchen.
Ten minutes later, with tea, soup and crackers grouped invitingly at the small desk in my own room, I was ready to begin work. I let my eyes roam the lines I had most recently penned, trying to pick up the thread and tone of the narrative before I began adding to it. Almost immediately, I felt the stress of the day and the shiver of panic I was still recovering from begin to melt away. Writing could be so relaxing sometimes—while at other times it made me want to rip my hair out and grind my teeth together.
The inconsistency of my abilities was not one of the things I enjoyed about the written word. I loved fitting the sentences together like puzzle pieces, waiting to discover the right combination that would send sparks to the tips of my fingers. I looked forward to developing the characters, letting them speak before I had the chance to edit their words, and allow their identities to form across the pages. I felt almost like a spectator, sometimes, watching a world come to life under my pen. And other times…other times, it was like the words danced in front of me, barely out of reach. I knew they were there, taunting me, but I just wasn't quick or smart enough to capture them.
Fortunately, tonight was one of the easy ones. The lines flew across the page, and before I knew it, over two hours had gone by and several unedited pages spread over the desk, across my lap and onto the floor. Writing was messy.
My tea was cold, the soup and crackers barely touched. I felt a twinge of frustration, but it was overcome by the satisfaction I felt at having accomplished something. I walked back through to the kitchen, not even glancing at the window. The shadow had slipped to the back of my mind—as shadows tend to do.
After cleaning the dishes of the food I had hardly touched, the heavy weight of the day suddenly seemed to settle on my shoulders. I could barely keep my eyes open when walking back to my room and getting ready for bed. After brushing my teeth, I dragged a comb through my hair and set my early alarm for work the next morning. It hadn't been thirty seconds after my head touched the pillow when I was deeply, blissfully asleep.