Lucy let herself into her apartment with a sigh and scrubbed a hand across her face, exhausted and ready to go to bed. She had been sucked into helping Levy with a research project and then gotten caught up in a guild-wide fight, and she hadn't even been able to escape from that until she had stopped Erza from skewering Natsu for starting the fight in the first place. It hadn't helped that Natsu was unrepentant—"But if the ice princess is running off on his own jobs, I have to fight with someone"—and Lucy had needed to use every trick of diplomacy she knew to prevent a brewing homicide.
Now it was late. So late that she wouldn't even have the hour or so for writing that she set aside most nights. She had been hoping to finish her latest chapter tonight, but apparently that wasn't happening.
She was so tired that she didn't register it as strange that light was spilling out from her living room until she stepped inside and found Gray sitting at her desk, legs swung comfortably over the arm of the chair while he flipped through a manuscript.
"Gray? What are you doing here? I didn't realize you were back from your job."
Gray startled, perhaps so engrossed in the story that he hadn't heard her return, and kicked the chair around to face her. She thought she glimpsed a bone-deep weariness in his eyes, remnants of exhaustion from his job, maybe, but he smiled at her and the tiredness vanished.
"Hey, you're home late! Yeah, I just finished my job and thought I'd drop by here."
Lucy opened her mouth to ask why he'd come to see her instead of going straight to the guild, but her fuzzy brain finally caught up and she gaped at the sheaf of papers in his hands. "Are you–are you reading my story again? I told you to stop doing that!"
"Well, you were taking forever to show up and I was bored. I had nothing better to do." He smirked. "I didn't realize you wrote romances. Been holding out on me, huh?"
"Ro…mance?" Lucy's heart jumped into her throat. Her current project was sitting untouched on the desk, so the one in Gray's hand… "Where did you get that?"
"I got bored since I've already read your other story, so I went snooping around and found another one in a drawer."
"You… How dare you?"
Lucy blinked back tears, her heart thumping wildly against her ribcage as she desperately tried to think of a way out of this situation. Maybe he hadn't realized what it was. Maybe he hadn't gotten far enough.
But that was the absolute last story she wanted anyone to read.
"Hey, hey, it's not like I went through your letters or anything. I figured you were just hiding a story from me so it wasn't all that personal." Gray's grin widened. "Oh, but I didn't realize how personal it was! I didn't know you dabbled in confessional literature, Lucy."
"It's not…" Lucy tried weakly.
"Oh, the heroine is obviously you. Really, I was not expecting to find your own fantasy romance! Thank goodness you weren't writing in sex or anything. Man, that would've been super awkward to read about your fantasy sexcapades."
Lucy wanted to sink through the floor and die. Her face flushed with heat and her stomach churned. For a second, she thought she might pass out. She buried her burning face in her hands.
"It's not me," she squeaked.
Gray snorted. "Of course it is. You barely even changed anything besides the name. So much for all that 'all resemblance to real people is coincidental' thing. It's really obvious who everyone is."
Everyone? This was the most utterly humiliating moment of Lucy's life, and she braced herself for the storm that was coming. She had kept her secrets for so long, and she couldn't believe that they were being spilled out like this.
"But good for you," Gray said brightly. "We all know you've been chasing after Natsu for forever. I mean, I guess fantasizing is the first step?"
Lucy dropped her hands and stared at him. "Natsu…?"
"Oh, sure," Gray continued blithely. "We've all been expecting you guys to hook up for ages. Natsu's just so dense, you know. If you want to make anything happen, you'd better spell it out for him. He'll never figure it out otherwise."
Gray swung his legs to the ground and dropped the manuscript onto the desk. Smirking at Lucy, he sauntered past her and headed for the open window.
"If you ever decide to publish that, you might consider changing up the characters a little so that it's not as obvious who's who." He flashed her one last grin and hopped out the window. "Anyway, goodnight! I'll see you in the guild tomorrow."
Lucy stared at the window he'd just disappeared through, her crushing relief warring with her disappointment and sadness. It could have been so much worse and she was so thankful that he hadn't caught on, even if something like disappointment curled in her chest. Her feelings were all laid out in ink, confessed to what should have been the safety of the page. It was both the best and the worst thing that they hadn't been unearthed entirely.
Natsu was dense?
"What an idiot," she whispered to the empty room, her lips trembling as the tears tracked down her cheeks. "It's you, Gray. It's always been you."
Gray trudged down the darkened street, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. Clouds drifted across the moon, casting the street in even darker shadow. Fine by him. It matched his mood perfectly.
He wished he hadn't found that story. He wished he hadn't read it. He wished he was as stupid as Natsu and hadn't seen it for what it was.
His right hand brushed against cool metal in his pocket. It was a key. He had picked it up on his job and accepted it as part of the reward. He had gone to Lucy's place intending to give it to her, but he hadn't had the heart after seeing that story.
Trouble with water and women, he'd been told. Well, he'd had plenty of both, and it didn't look like the latter was going away any time soon. The essence of heartbreak hung in the air tonight.
He didn't want to see Lucy turn into another Juvia, pining over someone who couldn't love her back and ignoring the person right in front of her. It seemed like everyone wanted something they couldn't have.
His fingers tightened around the key and he tilted his face towards the sky as the clouds moved on and let the moonlight shine through again.
"Oh, Lucy," he sighed to the moon. "Why do you have to make things so complicated? I was so sure that you liked Natsu."
emmahoshi: Ha ha, I tried to leave it a little ambiguous as to who knew and felt what for a little while, although there's only so much you can do with 1k words. Actually, I was originally going to use Natsu but thought it was too obvious, so I switched characters and took a different direction with the plot (such that it is). I still don't really care for Graylu, but every once in a while I dabble in something for a couple thousand words before running back to my sandbox lol Thanks for reading and reviewing. Have a nice day :)