Habits
They both had their little routines. Each day was a delicate dance, freely weaving about each other but always leaving beats for the fundamental steps. And then, one morning, they missed a step.
Like every day, Juvia was up first. Juvia made breakfast. It was delicious. Gray's day began with "Gray-sama, breakfast is ready!" and delicious food. Like every day, Juvia spent the morning nesting. The house looked fine, but somehow she always found something to brighten. In the meantime, Gray gathered himself together for the daily trip out to look for work requests and pick up anything they were running low on. He double-checked that all his clothes had made it to the door. Juvia saw him off. She triple-checked that all his clothes had made it to the door. And she was the slightest bit visibly pouty that they had. He kissed her goodbye. Everything was right, tightly choreographed, and in sync until he looked back over his shoulder as he swung the door shut.
Juvia always saw him off with a smile. Never that weird blank stare. Kind of... dazed? Maybe she'd just remembered something important she had to do today.
But still, he felt as if he'd done something wrong. He backtracked.
The natural flow of arm around shoulder, lips pressed to lips. The habitual action of a goodbye kiss. What was it? Did he use more force than usual? Not enough?
And then he realized that he'd never done it before.
It had felt like he'd done it a thousand times; would do it a million more. But never once before had he actually kissed Juvia. It should have been a more momentous occasion. She would have made it a more momentous occasion. He stopped in the middle of the path, listened for her footsteps. Listened. Lost track of time. She couldn't not follow him after that. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. This wasn't the right time. He'd screwed up. It hadn't been special. It hadn't been secure. This would give her questions he couldn't answer yet. Any second now, she'd be here with her questions and her hopes and her eyes full of excitement or would it be bliss or disappointment or tears or just plain love. He was used to the last one. It made his chest ache a bit in about six different ways, but he could take it. He could reject her again if he had to, knowing she'd know that she just had to wait a bit longer. Not fair. But necessary.
He counted sixty silent seconds before looking back at the equally silent house. It was eerie and Gray felt a hollow trepidation. She wasn't coming after him. Gray could think of only one reason why she wouldn't follow him. She must have fainted. Melted into a puddle. Walked off in a daze and concussed herself against a wall.
In any case, Juvia must be in trouble. And that was much more important than avoiding an awkward conversation.
It had felt real. It had felt warm. It had felt soft. But it wasn't real. It couldn't have been real. Juvia slapped her cheeks, tugged the bow of her apron tighter, and began the dusting.
The door opened more forcefully than it was wont to, and it's protest drew Juvia's eyes. Braced against the door-frame was a very paniccy, very flustered, very red and hot and glistening Gray.
"Did Gray-sama forget something?"
"...no." The door protested again and he was gone.
Juvia blinked to clear the residual Gray-sama from her eyes. Had he been there? Perhaps it was another delusion. Juvia thought she had better go back to bed. She'd been pushing herself too hard training lately and her subconscious was coming up with ways to reward her that would be better off in dreams where they belonged.
She never mentioned the kiss, and Gray had to break himself of a habit he'd never really made. They slipped back into the easy one-two-three waltz of their days. They still had two weeks until the tune began to twist, the chords clash, the tempo trip over tricky triplets.