DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN FAIRY TAIL.


I Can't Help But Remember James Dean


Gray was floored at how great this ravioli was. He took another bite into the pasta disc, and the delightful contrast between the spinach and the cream burst in his mouth. The place was great, the food was great, and he completely deserved this after being trapped inside a slimy giant slug for two hours.

"Juvia, you have to try this," he said, but when he looked up at his plate the chair across him was empty. He furrowed his brow in confusion, wondering if she had taken off for the rest room. He shrugged and went back to his meal.

His blissful state was interrupted by a something suddenly gripping his ankle very hard. "What the fuck!" The waiters and the other diners looked at him reproachfully. Embarrassed, he ducked his head under the table and pulled the tablecloth up. His partner was hugging her knees, rocking back and forth. She was staring blankly into space and murmuring to herself. She turned her head and their eyes met.

"What are you doing?" A part of him really didn't want to know.

"Get down!" she hissed, and he too disappeared beneath the table. It was cramped and her elbow was in his ribs. Juvia wouldn't stop shaking and saying incoherent things. This was weird, even by her standards. He was justifiably alarmed.

"Why are we under the table? They're probably going to think we skipped on the check or something." He just wanted to finish his ravioli.

She was on all fours and leaned across his legs. She was too distracted to notice that the love of her life was having difficulty breathing. The water mage lifted the cloth up just enough for her to peak before quickly pulling it down again. She retreated back into her ball, hyperventilating.

Once Gray managed to push down the sensation of her brushing against him, he grabbed her shoulders. "Juvia, what's the matter?"

His stern tone snapped her out of her semi-panic attack, and she inhaled sharply. She lifted the tablecloth again, this time a little higher so that the both of them could see if they slouched a little, but not enough for them to be exposed.

Her finger pointed somewhere near the door. "Does Gray-sama see that man over there, with the purple hair?"

Ignoring the fact that her sentence rhymed, sort of, his eyes followed the direction of her fingers. Gray watched as said purple-haired fellow took a sip of his wine, scrunching his face disgustedly at the taste.

"Yeah, I see him. Who is he?"

"Juvia's ex-boyfriend." His stomach lurched, and suddenly he didn't feel so hungry anymore.

"You had a boyfriend?" His mouth ran a little dry. Juvia was a very beautiful, intelligent, strong, loving young woman –objectively. The concept of her having anything other than a platonic relationship [with anyone other than you, an annoying voice in his head interjected] with anybody shouldn't have come as a shock to him.

Juvia nodded solemnly. "Bora of Prominence. Juvia dated him while she was in Phantom Lord, and he was part of a guild called Titan Nose."

"I…see."

"Eventually he got fed up with the rain so he broke up with Juvia. It only lasted a couple months," she shrugged. Her expression was so cavalier; it was as if it didn't bother her at all.

So why were they hiding underneath a table at a five-star restaurant? Gray held his tongue.

Apparently, however, Juvia was capable of reading his mind, and so said very loudly, "Ah, Juvia's earring! Here it is. Thank you for helping me find it, Gray-sama." She crawled out and he took it as his cue to follow. When they emerged, the restaurant was giving them very weird looks. He thought the best thing to do at that point was to have his ravioli wrapped to-go and get the bill as soon as possible.

Juvia was hiding her face behind a dessert menu. When he was about to raise his arm to ask for the check, a shadow fell over their table.

"Fancy meeting you here, Juvia of the Deep," a silky voice drawled. Gray hated his voice both on principle and because it was genuinely annoying.

"Bora-san!" she yelped. She self-consciously tried to pat down her hair. The menu fell into her stew. "Um. Good to see you."

He gave her a wide, crooked smile, and his eyes swept over her face to the flesh exposed by the slit in her dress. "Likewise. You look much better." And he said this as though she had been anything less than pretty at fifteen.

"Er. How kind of Bora-san to say so."

"You're welcome. So what are you up to these days? I heard Fairy Tail broke up. Isn't it such a funny coincidence that both guilds that you joined ended up disbanding?" he chuckled. Gray was gripping his butter knife hard.

The faint sound of rain outside could be heard. The ice mage cleared his throat. Bora's eyes were still glued to Juvia, but he inclined his head an inch in Gray's direction and spoke. "And who might you be?"

"Ah," Juvia looked uncomfortably between the two of them. "Gray-sama, this is…Bora-san. Bora-san, this is Gray-sama, Juvia's fr –"

"Gray Fullbuster," he said, with wary eyes studying the arrival. However, he was raised with better manners, and thus he gave a mechanical smile and held out his hand. And because the creep still wasn't looking at him and instead was assessing Juvia like meat at a butcher shop, Gray couldn't possibly be held accountable for his succeeding action. "I'm Juvia's boyfriend."

Both jaws across him dropped. Juvia was fighting a very violent internal battle. Gray nodded slightly, a signal for her to play along.

"You're her boyfriend?" he said incredulously. At this, he gave a nasty, mirthless laugh. "Boy. That made my night."

"Problem?" he growled. He grabbed Juvia's hand and locked it firmly in his.

"Oh, nothing. Just a bit surprising," he guffawed. He gave Gray a pitying look and patted him on the shoulder sympathetically. Gray shrugged him off.

"Spit it out."

"Easy, man. All I meant was, well. How and why do you put up with that?" he asked, jerking his thumb towards the woman across him. As if on cue, the rain got even harder.

"It doesn't rain when you're not around," he replied coldly. Juvia winced and glanced at Gray in concern.

"So I still have that effect on you, Juvia?" he said, whirling around and raising his eyebrows suggestively at the blue haired woman. Her eyes darkened and she pursed her lips.

"No, you do not. You should leave now, Bora-san. " She was blatantly glaring daggers at him now, and Gray could not understand for the life of him why that kind of turned him on.

The purple-haired man casually held his arms up in surrender. "I'm going, I'm going. Take my advice, though, kid," he told Gray, "and get out while you can. She's prettier now, yeah, but nothing special. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. And she's so damn clingy too, and don't even get me started on the annoying ra…"

He never got to finish that sentence, because Gray abruptly stood from his chair and punched him in the jaw so hard he fell over and slid across the room. The people around them, who had been watching the heated exchange, shouted and vacated their seats. Bora got up and got into fighting mode, but before Gray could get another hit, Juvia beat him to it.

"Water Lock!" Bora was trapped inside a sphere of water. He was noticeably gasping for air as Juvia lifted the sphere to carry him outside. Gray dutifully waited by the door and pushed it open for her. The bubble burst and he fell to the pavement still choking.

"He was annoying," she told Gray, and he laughed, agreeing wholeheartedly. It wasn't raining anymore.

The fun didn't last very long. Two magical enforcers approached them. "Were you the ones who incapacitated this man?" They began to panic, and he stepped in front of Juvia to speak. "Thank you. We've been trying to nab this perp for months."

"He's a what?!"

"Juvia dated that...?!"

Bora was scowling, and looked like a mangy street rat in the rain. "Bora of Prominence. Put young girls under spells and ran a slave trade ring. He escaped prison two years ago. You've done your country a service, have a good evening." They saluted the two mages and threw the criminal in the back of their cart.

Once Juvia collected herself, she lunged forward in an attempt to follow the moving cart, but Gray caught her. "Juvia is not done with you, you evil –" and she proceeded to swear so badly that Gray had to put his hand over her mouth because of the looks they were getting.

"Excuse me," an old man said as he approached him, and Gray was about to apologize for Juvia's horrible language in the presence of children when, "My granddaughter was almost a victim to that scoundrel, and it took two mages from Fairy Tail to bring him down. Now you two have put him away for good, and I cannot thank you enough."

The reminder of the guild made Gray's chest pang a little, but he shook the old man's hand and grinned. "It was our pleasure." It truly was. He enjoyed it.

His frail arms gestured to the restaurant behind him. "I own this establishment, and from now on, you two are welcome to eat here any time, free of charge." That meant endless amounts of ravioli, and Gray could feel his mouth water.

They thanked him and, once they had collected their heaping amounts of take-out, made their way back home. Gray felt light and jolly, because he could smell the food in the bag, Juvia's arm was wrapped around his, and he'd gotten to punch her ex-boyfriend in the face. It was a great night.

"Juvia cannot believe that she actually went out with that horrible person," she shuddered.

Gray couldn't believe it either. He didn't like thinking about what could have happened if Juvia had still been dating him when he got into the syndicate ring. "Mhm. Why'd you even date that loser anyway?" he said absentmindedly, and Juvia stopped in her tracks. Their arms were still linked, so he was pulled back as well.

"He was the only one ever interested in Juvia. She thought that if she wasn't with him, she'd be alone forever." She looked up at the starless sky. "She was fifteen and stupid. Gajeel-san used to say he was only with Juvia because she was in the Element Four."

Gray had an insult for him at the tip of his tongue, but Juvia wasn't done. "When he broke up with Juvia, he told her that he was tired of the rain, and she can't really blame him for that. He told her no one would ever be able to love her, and for a long time, Juvia thought he was right."

This explained why she had been so distraught at the restaurant; this was someone who had traumatized her so deeply with human relationships. Gray wondered if it was too late to go back and pummel him into the dirt. He watched as her bangs blew slightly in the wind, and her bottom lip began to quiver. It was incomprehensible, how anyone could ever be stupid enough to let go of this girl, who was so fucking beautiful, so brave and selfless, who had so much love to give, and oh. He felt like shit.

They continued the walk home in silence, with her cradling her arms and his hands stuffed in in his pockets, and he vaguely wondered if he should say something. When they arrived at the porch and Gray was digging into his pocket for the key, she said suddenly, "Thank you. Back there with Bora-san. And for listening. Juvia needed that." Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Gray-sama's the best fake boyfriend ever."

She was looking up at him with a tiny smile on her face that made his insides flop. "No problem," he said, grinning back at her. His fingers tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, but then, becoming aware of how intimate the action seemed, how close she was standing, chose to muss up her locks. "Go get some rest. We've got a lead to hunt tomorrow."

"Okay," she said a little breathlessly. She hadn't stopped staring at him with those impossibly blue eyes. "Good night, Gray-sama."

"Night," he said. He stood by the door and watched her disappear into her room. He sat on the couch, deep in thought. There was something now that wasn't there before.


A/N: Idk man I've always wanted Gray to meet Juvia's ex-boyfriend.