TITLE: running with the stars (2)
GENRE: romance, angst, drama
WORD COUNT: 3858
NOTES: originally this was going to progress faster but weLL
thanks for all the sweet reviews; dedicated to my legit kohai written_by
who literally writes better than me TENKS FOR BEING SWEET TO ME
/disappears into the sun
running w. the
stars
in our
e
y
e
s
—
part deux / / / / acrophobia.
i.
.
Fairy Tail Manor is one of those rundown, suspicious buildings that appear in the corner of every picture— its grandeur is like faded chamomile tea, a stain that won't come out even as people scrub away at it desperately, and the paint chips at the edges. There are shadowy figures in every window, and weeds run rampant in the front-yard. There's only a single flowerbox full of wilting daisies at the very top of the mansion, and nobody waters them.
The daisies live— somehow.
There's always an almost brief pause, a brief murmur at the mention of Fairy Tail's name; it's like a sad exhale, and he sits in his room, his eyes blinking and unfading and never forgetting.
The people of Fairy Tail Manor are just as pale, as if life bleeds from their veins and seeps into the sepia toned walls, the cheap florals gaining color as they walk through the hollow halls. Everybody knows who the others are, like the strange pink-haired pastor boy without a father, a blonde girl with a rusty type writer and dollars to her body, a red-haired girl without a name and the blue-haired boy who names her, an owner who hardly exists, an alcoholic woman with bills to pay and too many tarot cards, and three siblings— a bartender, a hulking, huge man, and a pet-store owner (two alive with frowns, one dead with a smile).
Nobody's quite whole,
(and nobody quite knows what that means.)
"... everybody who lives here is so peculiar," she murmurs aloud one day out of the blue, her eyes distantly pensive as she freezes her movements. Sunlight weakly makes its way through the dusty window, and spots of light dance across her face as she pulls her knees in— her eyes glow deep blow. Gray bobs his head in half assent.
"You live here," he points out dryly, his pencil rounding out the edges of her face. Juvia tilts her head, a hollow smile making its way across her face as she poses her fingers into a rectangle, his face somewhere in the center. He grunts at her antics for a moment.
"So do you," she eventually replies with a lopsided laugh, and it echoes through paper-thin walls and winding hallways and florals that wiggle in the sunlight as if they're alive.
.
ii.
.
"— you should get out more," Natsu remarks one day as he falls on top of his bed with a loud crash, his pink hair a startling contrast against the walls. He raises a brow as Natsu swings the master-key around his finger.
Damn bell-boy.
Gray takes a narrow glance at Natsu before glancing back down at his canvas, looking obviously disgruntled. Natsu grins— Gray wonders where it comes from for a second, knowing his past, but eventually rolls his eyes when Natsu strikes a pose.
"— ugly model," he remarks shortly in reply, his eyes critical, and Natsu snorts, but for once, doesn't retort. For a second, Natsu's eyes shift, and the bed creaks under his weight. When his gaze rests on a sketch of a girl, his brow furrows for a second as he tugs on his scarf; Gray ignores it, but the room shrinks smaller, like claustrophobia edging into his brain.
Natsu frowns in recognition— Natsu knows what he's doing, and for half a second, he can't breathe.
"Gray," Natsu says quietly, "it's been five years."
There's a beat of silence, and—
"… she's still here," he mutters in reply, and Natsu offers a dubious stare.
He doesn't really care what anybody says. She still exists within the pages, on his canvas, in the walls, in the air he breathes, in this apartment— she exists everywhere. Everywhere he turns, he sees wistful eyes, flashing teeth, pale, periwinkle dresses and the one time she smiled on top of unsteady wrought iron. She is everywhere, and he's never been able to escape.
He's not sure he wants to.
For a moment, they both pause, the silence deafening and hardening and pressing against his ears, like a desperate sort of pressure that aches at the edges, and it all comes rushing back— that day, a single jump, creaking black iron and weak fences, his hand stretched out to catch some(body) that didn't belong to him—never belonged to him— and sky— pure blue sky that doesn't fade or weaken, and Gray feels sick to his stomach, his head spinning. He pants, his breath short and struggling to come free, until Natsu grabs onto his shoulders and shakes, hard, and when he looks into his eyes, he sees a desperate reflection— his own— and Natsu sighs, his eyes dark and unreadable.
At least it's not pity, his mind whispers wryly, but his heart beats erratically, and the problem is he can't see clearly between reality and his dreams.
Gray stares at Mikey Chuck, a single New York Yankees ball cap print in a single massive sprawl of pure, undiluted city in all of its expansive scope and terror, and all he can feel are her cool fingertips, a fresh breeze, and lavender.
"I couldn't forget even if I wanted to."
.
iii.
.
One day, when the fluorescent lights flicker, when her fingertips graze the ceiling as if she were stretching toward the sky, when she hums under her breath and fists her secrets deep into her heart, it rains.
Her teacup falls with a clatter onto the floor, the cheap plastic bouncing off and spilling tea everywhere, and the scent is gentle as it seeps between the empty cracks of his floorboard. If Juvia notices, she doesn't say anything— she stares out the window as if in an empty trance, her eyes already torn apart and barely holding together at the seams.
The rain slides down the window pane, the drops leaving slight trails, and everything fogs and nothing can be seen. The light fades away to a pale gray, and everything is fuzzy around the edges, as if rounded out roughly with coarse sandpaper. Her eyes are wide and confused, her brows furrowed, and her mouth is a tight line and all too lost. Her breaths come shallow at the touch, and it's just a blunted butterfly's breath with every second that ticks by.
Juvia's eyes flicker, and her pale fingertips clench, and—
"— I need to leave," she murmurs suddenly, standing abruptly; her body shakes with every word.
He'd say something, honestly, but he sees her eyes and how they've turned glassy, and how with every single ounce of her being she pulls into herself, her shoulders hunched, and all Juvia looks like is small and sad and wilted. Instead, he doesn't question her, because Gray sees himself in nearly every facet of this girl, and it makes him wonder if he's really as broken as she is.
He doesn't stop to think about it.
He never asks, but Juvia's always been rather perceptive. On her way out the door, she pauses, her head tilted slightly, her hand curled around the antique crystal door handle delicately. Her breaths come fast and few, and he can feel the weight of her cold eyes on his back as he turns— the undercurrent of "you wouldn't understand," persists with every heavy word she speaks.
She looks like she's about to cry.
"I hate the rain."
.
iv.
.
"... how ironic," he eventually says after she leaves, the scent of mint and earl grey tea still in the air even after she's long gone. He takes out a cigarette, the battered box falling back onto the ground with a thick thud, and instead fills the room with the addictive scent of smoke and smog— anything, his heart thrums, to get rid of her— anything, his mind hums, to never see her.
All Juvia's ever been like is the rain.
.
v.
.
When Juvia comes back at nine o'clock the next day, she has dark circles under her eyes and she's pale and her breathing runs thin, thin, thin. It's cloudy, and streaky moonlight makes its way through the window as he stares down at her and the way her bones glow against cheap fluorescent lights.
When the rain starts to hit the window pane again, she flinches, her eyes angry and harsh and pools of regret as she trembles to her fingertips.
For a few minutes, it's like she forgets he exists— as if in a trance, she stares out the window, her eyebrows creased as her ghosts come back to beat at her heart and eat away at her. The rain melts into her cool blue eyes, and the window fogs at her fingertips as her mouth slowly shakes to a close.
"I—" she begins, as if steeling herself to go inside—
"— go," he interrupts her as if he understands her— as if he knows who she is and what she stands for and why.
He doesn't, though— and that's why they both freeze, as if winter slowly creeped into the doorway, and it's so, so cold.
Gray doesn't pity her, honestly— if anything, it's like a brief connection of broken people and what they represent, and all he wants is for her to be put back together again (if only so he knows it's damn possible in this damn broken world).
Juvia stares at him carefully for a moment, her head eventually dipping and bowed as her hair falls in waves over her eyes, and he can feel her pride crippling under the weight of every raindrop that hits the pavement. Juvia's eyes are misty like the rain when she looks back up, and all that's left behind is a washed out seventeen year old girl.
For a second, it looks as if she wants to ask something—?
"I— thanks," she says hoarsely, her shoulders quivering desperately.
Their secrets bleed between their tightly fisted fingertips, the whispers of pain and sadness and loneliness echoing with the rain, and she doesn't bother to ask if he wants to know.
They both know the answer.
.
vi.
.
There are three unspoken rules when she steps into his apartment, the floral wallpaper cracked and curling and tacked at the edges, his windows wide open with the sun streaming in, his painted city sprawled across the walls, glittering and flashing as if it was alive.
i. no personal questions asked.
ii. secrets are never breathed.
iii. time stops—
.
v.
.
— if only for a single moment, the past fails to move forward, memories fail and never come, and the future remains forever golden, like shallow cracks of sunshine, when he's in an apartment at nine o'clock.
For a moment, time stops, because she makes it easy to forget.
.
vi.
.
The floor cracks under every step she takes, her tiptoes dancing across the floorboards, and her stale croissant crumbles beneath her thumb.
They say it takes twenty-one days for a habit to form. Gray forgets who tells him so— it might've been the old man that bit the dust, the pastor that says wobbly words over his radio, the choir preaching in the background— it might've even been the old guy with the huge grin that owns the place, his back as crooked as the rest of the people in this damn manor.
It takes twenty-one days for a habit to form.
At nine o'clock, his head tilts as her heels click into the hallway, and his shoulders raise as she knocks primly, and his feet drag across the floor if only to see her cold blue eyes and lilting smile.
The habit isn't seeing her at nine o'clock— it's just seeing her, the way her back arches, the way her eyes ache at the rain, the way she breathes smoke through the window like tender curls that strain through the smog— it's a habit he needs to break, a habit he craves to snap the chains to.
But he can't, he realizes, when her laughter trickles through the edges of her lips, when she makes him eat and calls him names, when she drags him up and about, when she reenacts her stupid soap operas, when she beams at him and when all Juvia Lockser seems like is a pretty seventeen year old girl with duct tape winded around all the broken pieces that crack with every little step she takes.
Juvia smiles one day when he's at the breaking point, the edges of her teeth grazing her lip, her pale legs sweeping against the floor as fluorescent lights flicker.
She's like nicotine pumping through his veins, and he'd almost like to call it an addiction.
.
vii.
.
Juvia leans against the window pane, her hands stretched out toward the city as if to hold it in the palm of her hand. She clenches her fist as if to crush it, and she has the smallest, saddest sort of smile on her face; it's the kind she wears when she doesn't know, when nobody knows.
"Acrophobia," she murmurs as she stands on her tiptoes, her eyes glancing back down towards the ground briefly as if to count every little speck— a red car passing by, a pretty blonde girl, a cat.
Gray stiffens— he doesn't like the word, for some reason, and it echoes deep into his bones and runs somewhere into his veins and it speaks— it speaks fear and loneliness and guilt, and it bleeds as pain trickles down his arm and into his wrist.
"... what's that?"
Juvia blinks for a moment, as if considering the question— as if not expecting a response, really, and her thick eyelashes and blue eyes stare into him, boring holes into his skull as she smiles charmingly, her pale dress loose around her waist. She pretends as if she doesn't know what she's doing to him.
"It's the technical term for the fear of heights."
Her skinny wrists remind him of desperation as her white skin flashes in the sunlight— her skinny wrists remind him of somebody else.
He feels his chest tighten, he can't breathe, and the sky is closing in—
"— but really," she whispers, her blue eyes staring back out at the sky, her smile almost wistful and all too-knowing, "it's the fear of just falling."
Gray can't answer— perhaps never could answer— because his ghosts are coming back to haunt him.
.
viii.
.
She goes hurtling down to earth, her body smashed into pieces on the ground as the fence bends to her will and not his, as she smiles for only half a second and leaves behind the faintest hint of lavender that trails in the air—
She whispers into his ear as she lets go.
He's not sure what he fears most.
Her, being so high she could touch the sky, her bone thin legs flashing in the sunlight as caution tape rounds itself around his balcony because the iron is weak and so is her body as it bends in the air, or maybe it's just her falling.
He fears of falling, of her breaking as soon as she touches the pavement, of never being able to put the pieces back together again— he fears of falling, of never being able to pick himself back up from all the guilt that winds deep into his gut because you couldn't save her.
When his fingers shake as he takes her cold hand into his, and his entire world comes crashing down on him and he doesn't understand why— but he gets it, and it makes his mind reel and his heart tremble, and his hands are full of blood that splatters onto his neat white shirt.
It's not a fear of falling or a fear of heights— it's a fear of never knowing why, and his dark eyes scream as she bleeds life into the concrete.
.
ix.
.
Gray always dreams in black and white. It's almost as if his paintings bleed the color from his dreams, and all he sees on the darkest of nights are shades of grey.
But whenever he dreams of her, everything is red. Desperately red, like a glaring neon sign as he tries to change fate, over and over. It's a nightmare, a living nightmare as she falls, over and over and over and she's just shatters and absolute pieces on the floor.
When he tries to put her back together, his fingers tracing the lines of red as she continues to bleed into his palms, there are little slivers missing and she's too broken with the last smile she ever breathed etched onto her pretty little face.
It's all his fault, all your fault, his mind screeches as he continues to desperately clutch onto a lifeless hand, and all he sees is red because it bleeds into his palm and onto his shirt and into the concrete and into the world, and it's endless until—
— until there's a cool, almost not-there touch, and the red leaks out as if draining slowly away from him, and for some reason he stretches towards the pain desperately— so as not to forget, so as to never forget.
It's his punishment, his shackle— his love.
He opens his eyes and all he sees is blue— cool blue eyes and wavy blue hair and blue, and a soft, not quite there smile.
"You looked like you were having a nightmare," she remarks softly, a note of concern creeping into her voice.
Gray's not sure what he's beginning to crave more.
.
x.
.
Lyon finds him out on the balcony, the black iron door swinging shut behind him as they both breathe their ghosts into the sky.
The smoke puffs gently out— "… reopening old wounds?"
Gray almost smirks.
"It hurts for us both," he replies tiredly, a half-assed sketch of the new city buildings sprawled in front of him.
Lyon chuckles as he leans dangerously far across the wrought iron, loosening his tie along the way; Gray doesn't bother to stop him— they both are just rubbing salt in the wound, making the pain just as fresh as that day. They both hate heights— falling, perhaps, and staying here, drinking in the air she breathed before she disappeared— passed away, his mind mocks—is like hatred that fills his lungs and stays there.
It's like smoke and cigarettes and cancer.
Maybe she's always been his own personal disease, and Gray rubs his wrists at the thought.
After several moments of silence, of just pouring smoke into the sky and out into the world as if to spread pain wherever he goes, Lyon points away into the sky, his eyes shadowed. "You were always her favorite."
Gray snorts as he rubs his wrists again, shallow pangs of pain running skinny threads down to his heart. The doctor calls them phantom pains— Gray wonders.
"You say that as if it's a good thing."
.
xi.
.
Juvia tumbles inside with a tattered dress and bruises up her arms and a smeared smile— sloppy, kind, yet all too angry. The door swings shut behind her, the lock clicking and key falling out, hook line and sinker.
She has alcohol pounding through her veins— he can smell it on her sweet breath when she giggles as she winds her long, skinny arms around his neck. For a second, he stiffens, but eventually Gray closes his eyes, and if they both play pretend, he can almost smell lavender in the air as she settles her cool, pale thighs around his waist. Paper money and gold coins tumble out of her hand and onto the floor with a pretty clatter— it goes ignored. Instead, her lips are soft against the veins in his neck, and all she's ever been is an addiction— a pain reliever.
"You're drunk," he reminds her quietly, his calloused fingers tracing at the bruises that line her pale arms. She doesn't flinch, but he knows it hurts even as she hums in reply.
"Does it make a difference?" she challenges sharply, all the pain written across her face like an open book— he doesn't know her story, and she doesn't know his. He wonders if that makes anything any better, if it makes the pain any weaker, and if it makes it any easier to just forget.
"Coward," she says when he doesn't reply, a shallow, angry laugh making its way through her throat; Juvia is like a flick of the tongue— rough, unrounded, all too truthful, and all too untrusting.
There's a beat of silence, her heart thrumming against his chest, and—
"— a fear of falling," he corrects her softly, and Juvia's face suddenly crumples, her eyes broken to pieces before him as he smells the cheap perfume on her skin and thick alcohol on her tongue before she hides herself deep into his neck and stays there. She doesn't cry, but her eyelashes brush against his neck as she closes her eyes and sighs deeply, her smooth exhale a warning that sounds deep into his veins, and it does all the crying for her.
Gray rubs at his wrists, and if he plays pretend, he can smell lavender and feel her skeleton fingers resting against the pulse of his heart.
.
xii.
.
He can't save anybody, anymore.
.
TBC.
school has started for me. you can slay me now.
thanks a bunch for positive feedback tbh heh
this chapter diverges more from the orig birdcage manor series but there will be several parallels to certain characters so watch out for it hehe
and btw i love angst so this could take a more (/HAIRFLIP) dramatic turn, but yanno
sorry if this is totally unsatisfactory i just wanted to properly develop them but did that even happen ANSWER IS NO
basically- ACTUALLY the plot will come as it will but i swear it's coming? SORRY IF THIS ISN'T... V GOOD i'm working on it
but teehee pls review cc and anything else n tenks for reading! :-)
lit sorry if this 2nd chapter doesn't make sense like who the hell knows anymore
EDIT: I USED THE WRONG FEAR I'M A LEGITIMATE IDIOT GOODBYE LAUGHS AT SELF
xxx.