Note: As stated in the summary this is an aside to Siegrain in Lutalica. I don't want to change the rating of the main story and some of the thoughts I have about Mystogan in particular are not only extraneous but inappropriate for a T-rated fic.

When he saw her again for the first time his stomach dropped and his heart stuttered. He spun on his heel and fled the area as quickly as possible. Mystogan couldn't ever recall having what some would describe as a romance. He had flings. One offs. Sure some of them he'd been with more than once but for the most part he still considered the encounters as nothing but an agreement. He was stressed, they were stressed. Everybody won. Juvia hadn't started off as any different but she became different. The change both terrified and frustrated him.

Juvia's mother was a well known psychaitrist. Growing up with a woman who had a sharp eye for people had rubbed off on her. She was a fixer. Mystogan knew she thought the ability to pinpoint a person's flaws and adress them objectively would always lead to a solution. When he met her, she was fresh off an ugly breakup that didn't have a solution. Her ex-boyfriend had a personality that was incomatible with Juvia's and Mystogan could see how she'd twisted the situation into an ugly knot of personal failure. In the end, he pushed her away before she could blame herself for their expiration date. He cared about her enough to spare her the self-doubt that would accompany any relationship they tried to force. Mystogan never let her see the full picture of the mess he kept inside his head but she'd seen it anyway and didn't protest when he shut her out.

She'd chosen her specialty and Mystogan went back for another residency and fellowship he didn't need. Seeing her again, flushed with the rush of successfully delivering a high-risk baby, had been a real stilleto to the balls. Curls of her hair escaped her bun and she still had the same smile that everyone who ever met her loved right away. He had to get out.

The roof was his sactuary. He retreated there when his head felt too full and too heavy. She found him just after sunset and he wished he wasn't so predictable. It wasn't until she joined him on the ledge that his heart hurt. She still smelled like Japonica. He missed it – he hadn't realized until that very moment but he missed it.

"You know, I almost didn't take this job," she said quietly. "I didn't know if it would be possible to share a building with you."

"My reputation preceeds me, then?" he'd meant for it to come out hilariously dry but failed.

"I never listen to hospital gossip." Juvia sighed and glanced over at him. "Even if I did, I wouldn't need to. You're transparent, Mystogan."

"There's an oncology nurse on the second floor who would disagree with you. She called me, what was it, a thick cloud of noxious, insensitive fumes in the shape of a man too young for his job." Juvia laughed lightly.

"You're a miserable man," she whispered. "What happened to you?"

"I've always been this way."

"No, you used to be less miserable. You used to smile every now and then." Juvia angled her body toward him and bent one leg in front of her on the ledge. "You used to be the smartest person in the room without all the prickles. What happened?"

"I grew up, I guess." Mystogan spun around and the soles of his sneakers hit the concrete. "It's nice to see you again, Juvia."

He left her on the roof as quickly as possible but felt her eyes on his back long after he'd taken eight flights of stairs down to the ground floor.

"His potassium is climbing because of the kidney damage, which is damaging his heart. He'll die." Mystogan stabbed his finger on the surface of the conference table.

"We'll put him on dialysis." The woman across from him was very obviously digging in her heels. "The mother is mentally ill," she snapped. "You really should be looking into her instead of this –"

"She doesn't have a history of mental illness besides post-pardum," offered one Mystogan's team members softly. "The siezures will only get worse if we don't find a cause."

"We're already treating the infection with antibiotics," the pediatrician argued. Even though her response was meant for his subordinate, her glare was firmly on Mystogan. "I don't appreciate disrespect of my authority in this department, Doctor Fernandes."

"This is my case now and I am my own department," he snapped back. Mystogan felt the other gaze – one that hadn't been there before. The one from behind him. He didn't need to glance back to know Juvia had entered the room.

The pediatrician's eyes narrowed. "You don't get to trample all over everyone's toes in this hospital. I'm sick to death of the way you stalk around everywhere and act like the rules don't apply to you because you're some kind of savant or genius."

She went on but Mystogan sighed and leaned against the table. In a familiar motion the tip of his thumb and forefinger slid beneath his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. When he opened his eyes again, Juvia was still leaning against the door frame. Her face was expressionless but her eyes held him firmly. He stared at her and tuned the very angry pediatrician out. Juvia seemed to suck the poison out of the room without even trying. His head cleared and he had a thought.

Mystogan spoke directly to her even though she had nothing to do with the case. "What do you use in the NICU to bind IV meds?"

"Wheat gluten," she answered without hesitation. Her expression didn't change when he suddenly stood straight.

"It's Celiac Disease."

The pediatrician huffed but Mystogan's team fled the room, talking amongst themselves. When the department head finally cleared the room with a scathing glare, Juvia sighed. She crossed over the linoleum floor until she was close enough to breathe in and reached up to tidy the collar of his white coat.

"Thank you," he whispered.

"I didn't do anything."

"I couldn't think straight and you helped me."

"You need better people skills, Papi," she said under her breath. The petname was one he hadn't heard in a long time. "I should get home. It's late."

"I have to stay to make sure my patients survive the night."

Juvia's fingers moved from the collar of his coat to the apple of his cheek. "Where will you sleep?"

"I have a very nice office chair," he said, only half joking. Juvia sighed and Mystogan wished he could tell if she was disappointed in him or not.

"I guess you haven't changed that much." She smiled but he couldn't miss the sadness in it. "I'll see you around, Mystogan."

When he was alone in the conference room Mystogan felt tired. The day weighed heavily on his shoulders. He fell into a chair that wasn't nearly as nice as the one in his office and realized it wasn't just this one day but years.

Juvia very rarely sought him out. He didn't know if it was out of stubbornness or a desire to know exactly how much he wanted to be in her space but she made him come to her. For the first time since he'd been brought on at the hospital – and if he were honest, years before that – he wanted another human's company for lunch... and sometimes dinner depending on the day and her shift.

More than once she popped into a tension filled room just to watch him from the doorway. Given her policy on making herself available to him only when he did the work, he sometimes suspected one of his team members summoned her when he was behaving in an especially belligerant way.

On the days he felt the track in his head stretching in front of him for years he'd go to her office and wait. She'd run her fingers through his hair and tug at the tips just so. He remembered the way her fingernails would dig into his shoulders and wondered how wide he'd have to fling his doors open to convince her that he missed her and wanted to do something about it.

The answer was painful and obvious. All the way. He'd have to let her all the way in or she'd allow him nothing.

"But I don't like dictations," he whined.

"I don't recall asking," Juvia said lightly, tidying the stack of papers. "It'll take you a few hours, max."

"A few hours?"

She leaned over his shoulder and poked her thumbs into the tense muscles between his shoulder blades and spine. He felt her lips brush his ear. "If you kept up with your administrative work, it wouldn't be so bad."

"Usually I just get Morrison to do it." Juvia's firm but gentle massage turned painful.

"You can't continue asking the only woman on your team to do your clerical stuff. It's unbelievably sexist."

"But she doens't mind," he offered weakly.

"I mind." The pager clipped to Juvia's waistband beeped in a high shrill and she sighed. "I gotta go." For half a second he thought she'd kiss him but she didn't.

News of the death travaled fast. Patients died all the time but not babies. Mystogan found her on the staff balcony that faced the city. She leaned against the outer wall of the hospital with her shoes poking out from under the overhang. The bottom hem of her blue scrub pants changed from periwinkle to navy in the rain. Mystogan let the door close behind him and slid his hands into his pockets.

"It's not your fault."

"It feels like it is," Juvia whispered. She didn't wipe her tears away and they left droplets on her shirt.

"My first month here I had a patient – a pregnant woman – die on the table. They saved the baby but she..." He sighed. "She didn't make it."

Juvia reached out for his hand and he let her pull him closer.

"I spent days in my office watching the video and reading and re-reading her charts. I thought maybe I could figure out where I went wrong or where I was too slow and maybe next time I could be faster and smarter." He sighed and pressed his cheek to the top of her head.

She said nothing for several long minutes. The night cooled further and finally she turned to him. "Take me home."

Mystogan blinked. "Yeah, okay. Just tell me how to get there and –"

"No," she whispered. "Your home."

He understood that if he took her home, he wouldn't be able to leave her later. She'd wrapped his leash around her hand one loop at a time and there wouldn't be any spare inches left after this.

She clung to his shoulders and when her back hit the wall beside his bedroom door, her fingernails pierced his skin. Juvia's thighs trapped him between her legs with only enough space to drive into her over and over again. Her gasps and breaths were high pitched and he'd missed this too. He moved in to kiss her and she quickly pressed a hand over his mouth.

"You can't kiss me unless you mean it," she breathed. Juvia's eyes slid closed when he hitched her leg higher around his waist. "Don't fucking kiss me, Mystogan."

He grabbed her wrist – she didn't really need him to hold her up, Juvia's legs were amazingly strong – and pinned it above her head.

"And what if I mean it?"

Juvia's eyes were the darkest shade of blue. Now they appeared almost black. "If you kiss me, I'll want things."

"Things?" She tightened around him and he brushed his lips over her cheek.

"It can't be like before."

His head fell to her shoulder and he could finally smell the scent of her the rain had tried very hard to wash away. "I'm –"

"You're work, Mystogan." She wriggled her hand out of his grasp and wrapped both arms around his neck. He gripped her hip and felt himself on the edge. Mystogan loved the edge. The climb was fine. The fall was delicious. But the edge? It was perfection. "But I'm good at work."

"What if I'm not worth it?"

"You are. You were worth it back when we were residents and you're still worth it now." She closed her hand around his throat and brushed her thumb against the edge of his jaw. He hadn't shaved in at least a day and she enjoyed the roughness.

"But –"

"If you want to kiss me and mean it, do it or fuck off so I can leave."

She didn't take her hand off his throat when he finally kissed her. She squeezed lightly and felt his groan all the way down to her curling toes. Her hand moved to the back of his head and through his hair when he felt himself spill into her.

Mystogan hadn't caught his breath at all when she slid down to the floor and pushed him backward into his bed. He'd always had a fairly low recovery time – which was good because Juvia wasn't the kind of girl who cared to wait. Her thick curls brushed his chest as she left a trail of wet, open mouthed kisses downward. Mystogan's eyes widened when she grinned just before taking him into her mouth. No preamble. No talking. No complaining of mess. It turned him on like he didn't think anything else could. She swallowed every drop and crawled back up his chest. One finger traced the line of his jaw and for a brief moment he wished he'd bothered to shave. But then he remembered.

She bounced a little on the mattress when he flipped over over. Her breasts were still confined in a plain black bra most suited to a long shift at the hospital. He tossed it aside and closed his mouth over the pale pink tips. Here, he was frustratingly gentle. Juvia tugged at his hair and huffed. Her aggravation and impatience fizzled when he sucked the smooth skin of her inner thigh into his mouth and scraped his teeth over the swell of flesh.

His fingers slid inside of her before his mouth made it that far. Like him, Juvia had an affinity for the edge. She could hold out on herself for a punishing amount of time. He knew there was a place inside her head that she kept separate from everything else. A place reserved for distractions. Mystogan would never say so in a moment like this but he suspected that place would grow quite a bit during the course of her career.

The scruff of his cheeks and chin abraided her slick skin but he knew she loved it. Her back arched and she leveraged her hands against his headboard to press herself against his mouth. When she came it was hard and fast and impressive. Everything about Juvia was impressive.

Mystogan joined her on the pillows and heaved a deep breath. He felt the mattress move but even more so, he felt her eyes on him. His head rolled to the side to find her expression searching.

"When I said it can't be like before, I meant it," she whispered. "But –"

"Juvia, I've never... I mean I haven't ever tried before. Tell me what you need."

"I don't know yet," she said honestly. "I'll let you know."

"I don't want you to feel like you're doing everything and I'm just existing."

She smiled and leaned over to kiss him. Not the heated, mid-sex sort of kiss. This was softer. "I'm willing to put in this work for you but I need work from you, too. We'll start at the bottom."

"Okay."

Juvia's hair crowded him on the pillows but he didn't care. He'd never had someone so utterly invade his space before and he found he didn't care about that either.