I am so, so sorry for uploading THIS late. I have no excuse. I initially had a bit of writer's block, so I kept writing and rewriting and postponing the next chapter. Then exams rolled around and I was bogged down completely. AND, here I am, pretty much nine months later with the ninth chapter :P BUT, I worked pretty hard on this chapter, and we are moving ahead with the GraLu fluff!

So, please don't kill me guys! I'm really sorry. I hope you like this chapter. :)


Nine

I'm not sure how long I sat motionless on Lucy's bed, holding one of her hands in the darkness.

The excuse I gave myself was that if I left, she'd wake up, and then I'd have to run for my post life. Just protecting my tush, that's all. I'd spent an astonishingly long time simply marveling at the warmth of her hands and just watching her breathe softly.

However, patience had never been one of my greatest virtues. Or holding back curiosity, for that matter.

When I noticed my painting still lying with all its glory on the floor, I gently disentangled my fingers from Lucy's and bent down on the floor to pick it up and place it on the desk—that was my masterpiece on the ground. I'd like to preserve my art for the next ghoul conference, thank you.

Since I happened to be a ghost Lucy Heartfilia could hear, I had to tread carefully. Mr. B had not exactly renovated this place in the last decade; the floorboards still creaked like the whole blasted human population was waltzing on them.

Of course, treading carefully in my dictionary means clumsily knocking something over (or possibly killing a cat). On my incredibly careful way to the desk, my foot came down on a hard object, and I heard a distinct crack.

"Curse it!" With a sinking feeling, I hastily moved away and looked down. It was Lucy's phone—the one she pretended didn't exist. In fact, for a seventeen year old girl who left her phone in a corner of the room and then forgot all about it for a whole week, I worried for her social life.

It must've fallen down when I slammed the door earlier tonight. Or perhaps when Loke was trying to make out with my freak roommate.

I bent down to retrieve it and realized with relief that the hunk of metal seemed to be intact except for a large crack along the screen. Well, it's not like Lucy used this phone anyway; I can't even remember it ringing in all the time that it's been abandoned in this apartment. It looked like a model that had grabbed eyeballs some time ten years ago.

My foot had jerked it awake though. The screen glowed behind the ugly gash across its surface, and though I'd meant to simply pick it up and place it away from poltergeist hands, my eyes caught the letters anyway.

I repeat, I am not a spy.

But maybe I kind of took a teeny tiny moment to scroll down in surprise, once I saw the seventeen missed calls in the last two days from Mom.

My gaze automatically shifted to the photo frame on the bedside table, the one with Lucy and her parents. She'd kept shut about her mother when I asked her. I knew it was none of my business, but unless Lucy simply had no clue her phone had been vibrating away all this time her mother had been calling, I felt terribly sure she was ignoring those calls.

A sickened feeling gripped me. Once again I was letting myself get caught up in Lucy's life, the way I shouldn't, and my obstinacy sat firmly down on my moral compass even as I told myself I should piss off and let Lucy fight her own battles.

I was about to keep the phone on the bedside table and start preparing myself for a nosy speech I'd be giving to Lucy about this tiny discovery the next day when I heard her stir and murmur something behind me.

Well there go my great universal concerns about ugly phones and parent issues.

I was next to Lucy at once, kneeling in front of the bed, trying to figure out why she was moving around so much. Then I caught sight of her face; her eyebrows were pulled together and her nose scrunched up. It would've made a hilarious Christmas greeting card picture, except for the anguished expression she seemed to have.

Obviously, my cerebral cortex being the way it is, I spent a good twenty seconds frowning down at my roommate as she twisted around in the sheets and tried to escape her nightmare.

Then I kept the phone aside and gingerly put my cold fingers around her wrist. She whimpered a bit, and I felt an unfamiliar pang of agony in my chest. Like I was the one having that ghastly nightmare which made her look this way.

"Lucy." I sounded calmer than I felt. "Hey, Luce. Heartfilia, wake your ass up."

She muttered something in her sleep and made an unintelligible sound again. Finally I got up and pinned both her wrists to the bed, and spoke louder and more firmly. "Lucy, wake up."

I would've thrown a glass of water in her face like my good old human days, but that probably isn't the best thing to do to a sick person. Probably. I'm a ghost, I'm not supposed to know.

I bent closer to Lucy until I could feel her hair against my jaw. It was damp with sweat. "Heartfilia. Wake up."

She gasped herself awake and almost crashed into me as she sat up, getting herself even more caught up in the messy bed sheets. Her deep brown eyes darted around confusedly for a moment, and then found mine.

"Uh, please don't assassinate me, I didn't—"

My words were cut off with an unmanly squeak as Lucy's arms came round my neck and she pulled me closer. I stumbled clumsily onto the bed as she embraced me, her face buried in my shoulder. I could feel the feverish heat off her body.

Stomach doing unghostly backflips, I tentatively put my arms around Lucy's slim body as well, feeling the warmth burn through her clothes.

I felt myself tighten my grip around her, my left hand stroking her hair, running my fingers down the matted strands and smoothening them out. "Hey. It's okay." I tilted my head so that she could hear me. "It's okay."

We sat there in that awkward position on the bed, holding each other.

"I'm so sorry," she finally said in a low tone, still not letting go.

I didn't either. I was relieved she was coming back to some level of normalcy. "Why are you apologizing?"

"I'm not as pathetic as you think I am. I swear I'd normally never—"

I rubbed her back. "Shut up Heartfilia. You bring out the chivalrous in me."

I grinned as I felt her reluctant laugh vibrate through me.

"I thought chivalry was dead, Fullbuster."

"Mm. It died when I did, isn't that obvious?" I laughed when Lucy did a scoffing heh. "Tell me about your nightmare. What got you so upset?"

A pause. The usual silence Lucy likes to respond with when I ask her a serious question. Honestly, sometimes humans can be so dramatic.

Why are you giving me that look? I'm not dramatic.

Oh shut up.

"Lucy?" I prompted.

"I don't want to talk about it."

I closed my eyes, and then sighed, reaching up to unclasp her hands from my neck. "Of course you don't."

Missing her warmth already, I got up from the bed. I sneaked a glance at her slightly crestfallen expression, and then noticed how flushed she looked.

"Gray, I didn't mean to—"

"Get some sleep, Lucy." I didn't look at her again as I bent down to pick up the bottle of aspirin and handed it to her. She took it from me mutely.

Handing her a bottle of water, I fixed the sheets back to their original position and raised an eyebrow at Lucy when she didn't have the aspirin. "Come on. Down the hatchet."

She looked like she wanted to say something to me, but then she must've changed her mind because she set the bottle beside her and fell back on the pillows. I didn't ask her.

As Lucy fell back asleep, I decided that I'd had enough emotional onslaughts tonight than a ghost really needed.

A little fun wouldn't do any harm. After all, I was already dead.


I might mention my uncanny prankster habits as a young and happy little boy.

I should also perhaps mention than these great worldly talents never left me. So you see, sneaking a cat onto a snoring Natsu Dragneel's face is perfectly legitimate.

But even for a ghost—who, just the by the way, kind of has to hover around for a pretty long time—I was bored almost a few minutes into it. Sure, it was a joyous moment in my afterlife when Natsu made a half strangled gasping noise, breathing in a lot of cat fur and crashed himself on the floor to wakefulness. Still, I could feel my mind was on something else, and it wasn't until I was calmly watching Natsu spit out a fur ball that I remembered the cracked phone screen.

Well, this was a rather enlightening sight, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to enjoy it.

All Natsu's fault of course.

I was making a rather handsome picture of brooding over my little unnecessary discovery when I felt something warm against my leg. I looked down from my perch on Natsu's desk.

The cat was happily brushing against my ectoplasmic pants. "Wait, you're a cat." I raised an eyebrow at the white tabby as I made this very intelligent statement. "Of course you can feel me."

Natsu was in a tangled mess on the floor. I ignored him.

Picking up the tabby by the scruff of its neck, I grinned down at its confused face. "Sorry for the detour," I teased. It threw up its paws, trying to scratch my eyes out. I wasn't kidding when I said animals are drawn by my charm too. "But hey, that makes two living things that know I still exist."

The words left a bitter aftertaste on my tongue. Something tugged at the corner of my mind and I was torn away from Natsu's room. Suddenly I was looking at a hazy memory of a fireplace, a broken table and a ginger bobtail streaking across the living room floor, knocking over another chair.

A girl laughed.

My eyes closed with a hiss of pain as I fought against her face in my mind. The memory broke before I even let it resurface.

Feeling slightly shaken—and annoyed at Natsu still pathetically trying to cough up fur—I carefully set the feline on the desk and jumped down. He still hadn't noticed the cat.

In fact, it hadn't made a single sound. Not even a mewl.

I turned slightly, trying to break through the distracting images in my mind by scrutinizing the tabby. "You're not dead too, right?" I'd never really given much thought to dead animals. It felt almost rude to not consider the fact that there were sheep ghosts hanging around as much as people ghosts.

My remarkable deduction was shattered to smithereens when Natsu managed to recover and noticed the cat with a loud unmanly yelp. He grabbed a pillow, and I dived to scoop the tiny wriggling bastard in my hands before the pillow hit it.

He tried to drag a claw across my hands.

"It won't work, so quit trying," I told it sternly. "Haven't you ever seen a ghost before?"

Natsu was trembling behind me, hands shaking on the pillow. Well, it must've been disconcerting so see a sudden tabby float through the air, but I'm sure stranger things must've happened in Natsu's brain. But I was a tad worried about causing a possible cardiac arrest.

Getting a hold on the struggling cat, I made my way to the window, hoping to jump down to the next sill. I really didn't want to stay in Dragneel's room anymore—the atmosphere of stupidity was getting on my nerves and I needed cleaner air to breathe.

A pillow missed us as I jumped. All the better—I don't think Igneel would like fur and feathers in his son's room for rent.


"Gray?"

I let the tabby jump down from my arms as I walked over to Lucy's side, kneeling down in front of the bed. "Yeah, I'm here."

She opened her eyes tiredly, blinking once or twice before she focused on my face. I felt funny all over—she had strands of her blonde hair sticking up in disarray, her cheeks were flushed from fever, her eyes were sleepy, and yet all I could think of was how beautiful she still looked to me.

And it was scaring the hell out of me. Which is really supposed to be my job.

"I—what is that?!"

"What—oh that. It's a cat." I looked over my shoulder to see the thing jumping onto one of Lucy's unopened boxes, testing it a bit to see if it could be a possible home.

Lucy scrambled her way out of the sheets and sat straight up. Her eyes were wide and I started to freak—she had her usual assassinating expression on. "I can see it's a cat!" she snapped, her voice getting higher in disbelief. "What I mean is, what is a cat doing in my apartment Fullbuster?"

"Hey." I cocked an eyebrow at her, reaching over to grab the tabby. "I happen to like it. And also, it's kind of our apartment?" I looked down at it, one finger stroking its belly. "So what do you want to name it?"

There was a very long, very awkward pause which I feel positive was just enough time for Lucy to mentally call me every bad name in every language she knew.

"Do we look like an old married couple to you?" she asked finally. She actually looked hilarious despite being furious. With her messy hair and wide eyes she wasn't coming off very terrifying. "I hate cats!"

I let out a low whistle. "I thought of Happy."

"What?!"

"Happy." I grinned up half apologetically, half pleadingly at Lucy. "I'm thinking of calling him Happy. D'you like it?"

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Gray," she started, slowly and patronizingly. Everything in this flat almost felt normal again. "D'you hear me? I hate cats."

"That's why you have me. They adore me." I rubbed the tabby's back and it purred, nosing its way into the crook of my elbow. I was glad it was warming up to me, just in time to impress the lady nonetheless.

"Fullbuster, I swear to God—"

"Look around, Luce," I said finally. My voice was quiet. "Everything in this room—it all belongs to you. I don't have a single thing to my name here."

"I—" Lucy, exactly as stubborn as I was, starting to argue and then broke off. She deliberated for a few minutes, bottom lip jutting out and looking conflicted.

"Fine." She sighed, looking down. "Keep him. Happy."

Happy purred.

I let him wander, padding across the creaky floorboards. Lucy and I weren't saying anything, and the silence felt strange and comfortable at the same time. I glanced at the clock—3:30 AM.

"Aren't you sleepy?" I looked up at her, searching her deep brown orbs.

She was chewing on her lip. "I keep having nightmares. I can't sleep."

"I could read to you."

Lucy looked as shocked as I felt at my words. But I honestly wouldn't mind—when I was still alive, the only way I'd ever fall asleep would be with a book between my fingers. She was a reader, and I knew it'd be especially effective that way.

Then she shook her head. "No." She looked away. "Thanks."

"It's really no problem," I pressed. "I used to do it all the time for—"

I felt like kicking myself in frustration as I stopped short. Lucy's eyes flitted to mine as I stopped talking, curiousity burning in them. And I knew, and hated, the question which was coming.

"For whom—"

"No one." My words came out harsher than I'd intended them to sound. Desperate to drive the conversation away from where it was headed, I remembered what was actually bothering me and worked up the courage.

"I have something to ask you."

Lucy crossed her legs, resting her elbows on them. "Yes?"

Taking a deep breath, I gestured to the cracked phone on the bedside table. "I knocked over your phone," I explained. "And when I picked it up, I noticed you have quite a few missed calls." She gave me a puzzled look and I came to the point. "From your mother. Seventeen. Over the last three days."

She changed her posture at once, stiffening. A muscle leapt in her jaw as she set it firmly. "So you decided to pull a Holmes on my life." Her tone was quietly angry. Betrayed. "Again."

"No, Lucy—"

Her voice shook. "Never touch my phone again."

"But don't you want to know why—"

"No."

I frowned at her. "Hey, you're all alone in another town. I think you should at least pick up her call."

"Gray, stop."

"Lucy, what if your mother needs you—"

I never saw it coming. Lucy wrenched a photo frame off the bedside table in a sudden outburst of rage and flung it across the floor. "She doesn't. Need. Me!" She was screaming, and the sounds of the frame shattering against the opposite wall, Lucy's loud words and Happy's shocked sounds all mingled into a terrible noise.

"Okay, okay, Lucy—" I got to my feet hurriedly, trying to calm her down. "Hey—"

And then Lucy was sobbing, her face crinkling up until she collapsed onto the sheets. Her screams dissolved into helpless, desperate crying. There was a deafening, bitter silence in the room. Only Lucy's heart wrenching sobs, racking her whole body.

I regretted having said anything to her. Each time she drew in a ragged breath it sent a pang of agony across my chest. I stood frozen to the ground, unable to comprehend what to do.

"Luce," I couldn't recognize my own voice. It came out in a guilty, pained whisper. I'd never seen her like this.

But the second my fingers made contact with her heaving shoulders, she jerked it off. I saw the effort she made to stop sobbing, sucking in breath sharply, flinching away from me every time I tried to touch her.

Then she pushed the sheets aside and stumbled her way across the floor, to the shards of glass and cracked frame lying on the ground. It was the picture with her and both her parents.

I stood motionless, hating myself. It seemed trying to unravel a single secret of each other always ended up hurting one or the other. Neither of us wanted to bare even a fraction of our soul to each other, and yet each time we thought it was okay to, we ended up in a mess more complicated than the last.

And I detested it, because I couldn't leave Lucy Heartfilia alone despite all of that.

She was still trembling. Probably in fury. I watched as she pulled out a polythene bag from beside the trashcan and violently started to gather the broken glass. It was only when I saw she was cutting her fingers raw that I rushed to her side, yanking her back by the shoulder.

"No, let me go, GRAY!" She shouted, bloody fingers pulling at my restraining hands. I was still stronger than her. Gripping her by the wrists, I pinned her against the cupboard. "Lucy, calm down, you're hurting yourself."

"NO!" She looked deranged. Her eyes were mad, tortured and outraged at the same time. I'd seen Lucy angry. But I'd never seen this. I felt helpless and bewildered, watching her scream and cry at the same time. The last thing we needed was for Igneel and the landlord to wake up and find her this way.

"Gray, let me go." She tugged at my hands, but I refused to let go. We were both kneeling on glass shards, but I knew I wasn't the one bleeding. "Just go away, okay? Please just LEAVE!"

"Lucy, stop—Lucy, listen to me—"

"I was fine!" She was still struggling, but now she had her face scant centimeters away from mine, spitting the words in my face. "I was fine, you bastard, before you had to come with the third degree—why do you care about my life?"

I couldn't bear listening to the nerve wracking sound of Lucy's walls chipping away as she broke down and yelled at me through her tears. And it was all my fault.

Without thinking, I reached over and put my arms around her, pulling her to my chest. One of my hands still had her wrists in a death grip.

She was trembling all over as she thrashed against me. I could feel her trying to hit me wherever she could, but I obstinately didn't let go. I released her hands and buried my left hand into her hair instead, pulling her head into my shoulder, holding her tightly as she screamed against my collar. Her knee banged against my torso in a desperate attempt to hurt me.

"Shh, Luce." I had her clothes grasped in my fists, my legs spread on either side to make sure she didn't try to escape and fall back on the broken glass on the other end. "Shh, sweetheart, someone will hear. Calm down."

"Let me go, Gray!" she screeched. Her voice cracked and broke. Her hands beat against my chest, as she cried loudly, her tears soaking through my shirt. I could feel them.

"No." Instead, I pulled her against my body even more, tightening my hold on her lithe body. My lips were on her hair. "I'm never doing that."

Lucy continued fighting, until her shoulders heaved and her sobs were reduced to a silent flow of tears. She was panting against my shoulder. I realized she'd stopped trying to punch me and her fingers were curled tightly around my collar now. I bent my knees around her, my arms supporting her heated body and kissing her hair until she gradually became quieter. Finally, she stopped gasping and shivering. I felt deep, slow, uneven breaths against my chest.

There was a deadly silence. Lucy was still.

I couldn't remember ever holding onto anyone as hard as I held her.


"Here."

I stepped over Happy as I carried a towel washed with warm water to the bed. Lucy was leaning back against the wall, staring at her bloodied skin.

Handing her the towel, I stood in front of the bed. She silently took it, wiping away the blood on her hands and knees. Her pajamas were stained crimson.

She hadn't spoken a single word.

I had kicked the ruins of the photo frame to one side, meaning to dispose of it the next day. As I threw Lucy some antiseptic, I checked the clock again—4 AM. It had been the longest night I'd ever had. And I'd spent many a long night after I died.

Cleaning up and waiting for the water to get warm had given me a few precious minutes to think. And I'd come to a decision.

Maybe Mavis had been right. I didn't know. But I knew Lucy had become far too important for me to ever imagine losing her. And whether she ever chose to open up to me or not, I realized I wanted to tell her about myself. I had always trusted only a handful of people in my life—and though it terrified me, I knew I wanted to trust her too.

I wanted to bare just the smallest part of me to her.

Once she was done, I crossed my arms. "Are you tired?" I asked abruptly.

I was waiting for the obvious answer. But Lucy shook her head. She hadn't looked me in the eye since I let her untangle herself from my arms.

"Then get dressed."

Speaking for the first time, she asked in a slightly hoarse voice, "Where are we going?"

I looked down at her. "The cemetery."


It was a bit short. I promise to make up for it in the next chapter. SO, how did you like the drama? Tell me your thoughts by dropping in a review, please! It'd really help. :)

P.S. I am currently tripping over DNCE. Is anyone else totally loving their music?

Anyway, see you next chapter. :)