A.N.- For me GrayZa is much more than Riverbanks & Brilliant fortune. For me GrayZa is trust.
So I'm doing two things for this prompt. Anyway, this is the first one & I'll wait for ya at the end of the page. Enjoy!
I don't trust you
She looked at the back of his head again & tried not to sigh, but she had been suppressing the urge for a couple of hours now, so this time she found herself unable to stop the softest of breaths that left her lips in the form of a tiny sigh.
"Everything comes to light." Mira whispered slowly walking by Erza while cleaning some tables nearby.
Erza had not only been caught staring but also her thoughts have been discovered.
She reacted in slow motion; her face acquiring a surprised expression with every passing second till her countenance was a silent plea for the earth to swallow her whole before she happened to embarrass herself even more.
"Do you want to talk about it?" The white-haired bartender asked softly as she surreptitiously pretended to be serving some beverage for the redhead magician.
There was no point in playing fool. Judging by the way Mira was looking at her with complicity, it was pretty obvious she already had a very good idea of the feelings Erza was locking inside of her right now.
Another thing was the looks she gave to the person a pair of tables across them; the mage Erza had been watching covertly while pretending she didn't really care.
"So, you love him or it's just his body you want to slam against the table & pound mercilessly with yours?" The woman asked calmly while taking a seat next to Erza on the table.
Erza immediately choked on the apple juice Mira had poured her just a moment ago.
The mage fought stubbornly against the noisy coughs that left her mouth but she couldn't mute them in the least.
"Hey, Erza, are you alright?" It was no surprise that the fuss made Gray want to know about her well being.
"You are going to be the one in trouble if she notices you're not wearing any underwear." Mira whispered to Gray in a voice loud enough so that Erza could also hear.
The ice mage immediately scattered around searching for something to cover himself, be it his pants or an unsuspecting tablecloth while a slightly tipsy Natsu laughed at his friend's/rival's luck.
Even if Erza had already calmed her breathing she did not lift her eyes from the wooden table. Her mind wasn't on the worn out surface but in a farther place.
Mira put a hand on her shoulder & only then Erza looked at something aside from the scratched wood from the table.
"He worries about you, won't you tell him?" Mira asked slowly. She was confident Erza would know exactly what she was talking about.
"I don't know."
The genuine confusion in Erza's demeanour made Mira smile softly. Her gaze shifted to Gray who was arguing with Natsu, apparently over the fact that the fire mage had taken hostage the ice mage's clothes & was threatening with burn them down if his demands weren't met.
Erza's eyes weren't focused on the scene in front of her but in a much farther place.
"You don't have to answer me, but eventually you'll have to answer that to yourself."
Erza nodded painfully. She really wished that day would never come; she felt as if she couldn't ever be ready enough to face the truth & held accounts to herself.
She convinced herself she still had time left & kept on with her day as if the conversation hadn't transpired.
She was good at hiding her feelings; it had something to do with the way she simply buried them in the deepest part of her & refused to acknowledge them till the very last second.
The next morning she went on a mission with the team & the conversation with Mira was already a distant dream; even if the mission wasn't anything particularly interesting or out of the usual.
Most missions became undemanding when executed along with three of the strongest mages in the guild that additionally worked together as well as an engine in perfect sync.
Not that Erza would ever relax & underestimate any missions but complete them with nothing more than the most serious demeanour, even when having elbowroom for them.
Because even simple missions like this one had unforeseen possibilities that coerced her into putting her life on the line for the sake of fulfilling the aim of the campaign.
That's how she found herself running from a rapidly collapsing castle at the peak of a mountain.
She just had to make sure they had destroyed every single curse charm in the place before she decided it was acceptable to leave the crumpling structure.
"Keep running forward, no matter what." Gray's words were hoarse yet clear in the distance. The unspoken agreement that he would catch her if she were to fall was clear even if it was purposefully left out of the sentence.
She saw the end of the road but kept running, never stopping to think to what might happen to her if Gray wasn't there to help her. Not even allowing the thought of a backup plan like the armor she could equip to save herself if her teammate was unable to keep his inferred word.
An ice ramp materialized under her feet not even a second after leaving the ground
She kept her pace till she couldn't slow down; bad news for the unsuspecting Ice mage, back towards her, at the end of the ramp who got to be the brake for the redhead woman; the momentum sending him flying towards some bushes several steps ahead of them while a snickering Dragon Slayer witnessed the whole thing.
"Did you see that, Lucy?" Natsu asked to the blonde girl. "Erza jumped from that cliff, slid down an ice slide & knocked Gray down in less than five seconds without even blinking." He narrated while letting himself laugh hysterically.
Lucy looked back and forth between the terrifyingly high cliff and the dauntless armored mage in front of her looking as unexcited as ever.
In Lucy's head there were tons of bad case scenarios to even shelter the idea of jumping off a cliff & slide down a giant ice toboggan without even a sliver of fear.
"Erza, did you really just jumped down from that cliff, without a second though?" The incredulous blonde mage asked.
"Gray said it was ok." She assured. Gray had never said such thing but his words implied he had her back, so Erza didn't have the time to get worried.
"But what if something went wrong?" Lucy questioned with her eyes glued to the distant peak of the cliff. Thank the spirits Natsu & her had the chance to slip away from the castle through a different route.
"I never harboured that thought in me."
Erza was strong; undoubtedly, she would be more than qualified to survive even without having Gray helping her. But this was a mission they were doing in teams, & if her teammate told her he would be there for her, Erza would take that for granted.
"I would be really scared of something going wrong to be able to get away on time." Lucy thought out loud.
"Gray told me to keep running, there was no reason to cast doubts in my mind." Erza assured.
Gray's words were never an order but Erza followed them without second thoughts simply because the Ice mage had yet to give her a reason to question him in the middle of a life-or-death situation.
In the background Natsu was helping Gray to his feet not without a fair amount of mockery typical between them.
Lucy decided that discussing the topic with the headstrong mage was resulting futile so she let the topic drop & instead turned her attention to the tired Ice mage that seemed as if he had been ran over by a stampede of angry bulls.
Erza offered him a nod & that was the only recognition he seemed to require to stand up & keep up with the mission.
The train back home was quick & Erza decided to go back to the guild while the others went to retrieve their bounty. She had no particular reason for that other than the need to have a taste of some strawberry cake waiting for her at the guild.
She was already seated at a table absently looking around without focusing on anything in particular when her faint thoughts were halted by Mira's velvety voice caressing the sensitive shell of her ear.
"You trust him with your life, so why not trust him with your heart?"
Erza nearly jumped out of her skin & her mind reeled to both remember & try not to ponder about the person Mira was referring to.
For several seconds Erza tried not to think at all; keeping her mind at bay in case Mira was reading her thoughts or something. When she decided the mage couldn't do such a thing, but was actually good at reading her expressions instead, Erza let herself contemplate the woman's words; her mind drifting mechanically towards that day's events.
"I don't have an answer for that." She finally declared with a defeated voice.
Mira smiled, knowing quite well that her guild partner was striving for an answer she couldn't really find... something so simple she couldn't even fathom just because she refused to see straight.
Even so the Satan Soul mage couldn't blame her. Her rough past was enough justification as it was for the Armor mage wariness...
That afternoon Erza was walking calmly on her way to Fairy Hills when she noticed something unusual marring the green of the fields; a body lying on the ground. She might have gone into battle mode if she hadn't noticed the relaxed stance of the figure & the calmness that surrounded it.
She found herself attracted by some sort of unexplainable magnetism that made her gravitate naturally towards the person sleeping in the soft grass. She squatted beside him & didn't find the will of strength to look away from his sleeping face.
"You and I are such a strange case" Erza confessed to her dormant love interest. Gray was so deep in slumber he didn't even flinch when the red hair played softly with the bangs over his eyes & forehead.
"Because even when I trust you with my life I still don't trust you enough to confess my feelings for you." She admitted guiltily while standing up leaving the inert man rest without interruptions.
"That's what I repeat to myself, but maybe it's me the one I don't trust... it may have been me all along." She thought with guilt because she was unable to even admit that out loud.
Gray waited several seconds to open his eyes & look in the direction Erza was just to see her silhouette in the distance.
Sometimes while Gray was lying on the grass people would come to talk to him... he would pretend to be asleep to avoid being interrupted while resting.
So, unknowingly to her he had been awake, but hadn't moved out of laziness at first; then it became fear of becoming a target of the consequences of Erza's conflicted feelings.
"I would love to say the same to you... but I don't trust myself to be worthy enough for you."
Without trust there is no love...
A.N.-Okay, writing in english is really a handful for, so I'm really sorry for taking my sweet time with this things (they're from 2013 & I'm not finished yet, I truly apologize for this outrageous situation). But I will finish them no matter what, so thanks to the people that are still sticking around.
Next one-shot will be a second thing I'm writting for "Trust" & then I'll tackle the forth promt "Battle". Let me know if ya liked it & if I should finish this or just give up (dunno, I really wanna hear your opinions).
Kiosé Over & Out