Heaven help me for the way I am
Save me from these evil deeds before I get them done
Behind the bar is a purple-haired bartender that ignores Juvia when she tries to get her attention. She's fast, making drinks and leaning against the bar to hear patrons who have decided this method of drink acquiring is faster than waiting for a server at their table.
Juvia hangs off the bar, trying to catch the woman's eye. When that fails, she tries waving her down. There's a group of men at the opposite end of the bar and they're throwing tips the woman's way and complimenting her vigorously to keep her attention and the drinks coming. Juvia laments this power of invisibility. The only attention she ever seems to garner is from those whose attention she would rather not have.
A gust of wind against Juvia's cheek steals her interest, and when she turns, she realizes not only has Mard and Meredy snuck out of the club without her seeing, but they've also re-entered and they're choosing a seat not so far from the place where Jellal and Gray sit side-by-side.
Jellal sees them, too. He leans in to say something to Gray, pressing his lips against his ear to make himself heard in the loud club. Juvia sees Gray's shoulders go stiff and still and assumes it's Jellal's proximity that makes him that way more than anything he's said. Juvia thinks back to the pond, lying on the ground on her side, kissed just before Jellal reached then for Gray, and Gray's beleaguered response, his hesitancy battling with his firm words. To live between a place where you want to be kissed but deny yourself sounds like torture.
If Jellal realizes Gray's taciturn response, he doesn't give up and give him space, he stays there, almost like a challenge, waiting for Gray to set the boundaries and make the rules that Gray seems too torn to make.
A few seconds pass. Gray nods to whatever it is Jellal's said, and Jellal eases back in his chair. His arm is around Gray's seat, though, and he doesn't do anything to remove it. Juvia wishes she were there with them. Between them, maybe, pulled entwine by their polarizing personalities. She longs to be lying on the ground again, to feel Jellal's hand on her back as he turns to Gray. She longs to see passive turn to passion, the vigour and violence uncovered when the layer of civil they keep about them is peeled back and the feral is revealed.
"Juvia?"
Juvia swivels on her heel and looks at the bar. She's flushed all over and her lungs feel a little tight. Her heart beats too fast for her to pretend she's not excited in some fashion. She swallows against the feeling and takes a breath. Another bartender has joined the first. Her hair is long and white-blonde, her lips red like a rose. Her eyes are kind, like her smile.
"I'm Mira."
"Hi, Mira," Juvia manages to sound like a normal human. She wants to look back at Gray and Jellal and see if they've gotten any closer, she wants to insert herself between them, uncertain if it's jealousy she's feeling or something else, but she will not allow herself that concession, not now. She cannot give into such a base urge because if she does, then who knows what else she'll do? She's feeling erratic and when she feels like this, she knows mania is just a step away. She needs to be careful.
"Have you ever waitressed before?" Mira asks. She questions Juvia, but her eyes are narrowed on the end of the bar, where the purple-haired bartender serves a frazzled-looking Ultear.
"No," Juvia admits.
"I'll teach you everything I know."
Waitressing, Juvia finds, is simultaneously the easiest and most difficult thing she's ever done. Taking drinks to tables and taking orders is simple enough—she can write down the table number and their preferred selection, it's difficult to mess that up, but there are subtler things that go into being a good waitress. Friendly, flirty, positive, everything that doesn't come naturally to Juvia. It's blaringly obvious to her, after the third table she's served, that she is not good at making friends, or even at making nice with people. She doesn't know the right things to say at the right time, unlike the blonde waitress, who seems to have everyone laughing and looking at her adoringly. Juvia thinks she'll try to mimic her when she gets better at this. Maybe that will help, because the blonde is raking in the tips, and Juvia has a total of seven dollars.
"You need to smile more, Juvia," Mira says upon Juvia's return. She has a tray laden with drinks and a table number written on it for Juvia's convenience (Mira says she won't need the numbers in a couple of days. Juvia isn't so sure.) "Like you wouldn't rather be anywhere else. Even if that's not true."
"I don't know if I can pretend like that," Juvia admits lowly.
Mira's hearing is excellent; she misses nothing. "There are lots of people lining up to be off the door and on the floor. I'm sure if you asked Jose, he'd let you go back to your regular duties."
Back on her regular duties, she won't be able to watch the floor, unless she can charm a patron into thinking that she'd be a good companion for their evening at the club, and Juvia just doesn't have that much faith in her acting abilities.
"I'm fine." Juvia takes the tray almost too aggressively, slopping a long island iced tea up over the brim of its glass. She turns from Mira and reads the table number. Seven. Her heart sinks. But she's determined, as well, so she sets off in that direction before she can lose her nerve.
The table looks up at her approach. Meredy peers at her with interest. Juvia takes Mira's advice and smiles. Something like longing flashes in Meredy's eyes and Juvia once again thinks maybe the things that pulled them together originally still exist, somewhere deep down. Her friend isn't lost completely.
"Hi," Juvia says to Meredy, ignoring the men around them.
"Where's the blonde?" Jackal asks. He lounges in his seat with his arm over the back of his chair. He'd been eyeing Meredy suggestively, but now that he has something else to focus on, Juvia can feel the weight of his ire filling the space his interest had.
"Busy with another table," Mard says before Juvia can get a word out. "Want to sit, Juvia?"
"Oh," she flusters at his unexpected offer.
"You're allowed," Meredy adds suddenly and with one of her bright smiles. Juvia looks for malice hidden within it and hates that she feels like she must. She's never known Meredy to be cruel, but recently, it seems like she doesn't know Meredy at all.
Juvia stands there awkwardly, neither committing nor moving away.
"Do you like working the bar?" Mard asks. He looks sincere enough, a little passive, a little mean around the edges, but in this, he seems genuinely interested.
"I'm not very good at it," Juvia blurts out instead of saying something fake and upbeat like she's supposed to. She flushes.
Meredy laughs at Juvia's awkwardness, almost like she used to, but at once, Juvia realizes she sounds too languid. A little too dazed, a little too laid back to Juvia. She sits there with her head back against the chair and her fingers rubbing a nick in the table while Mard absently plays with a lock of her hair. It's such a simple action, but it's intimate, both Juvia and Meredy see that. Meredy's smile is telling, she thinks it means more than it does.
Juvia fights the urge to grab her and shake her, to remind her of the night outside Phantom when Meredy denounced his attention. She doesn't understand Meredy's sudden shift in behaviour, or even if it has been a shift. Was that an act, that night? A show put on for Juvia and Ultear? Did Meredy not want them to know she'd been the object of Mard's affections, and she wasn't as against it as everyone would think she needed to be?
Yes, Juvia realizes. Mard is so much older than Meredy. Ten years, at least. And sometimes, Juvia doesn't think that's such a huge gap, but those relationships are usually between people older. Meredy is seventeen. What does she have in common with a twenty-seven-year-old? Meredy knows Juvia well enough to know she'd ask those difficult to answer questions without pause.
"Okay, boo-boo?" Jackal asks with a facetious grin. He's hungry for another confrontation. He doesn't care what made Mard ask her to stay, he's just glad she hasn't moved on. He intends to humiliate her if that gleam in his eye means anything.
Juvia doesn't look at Jackal as she sets their drinks down on the table. She wants to spill it into his lap and beat him in the face with the tray. She wants Meredy to side with her, but last night is still clear in her mind, and she cannot act without Meredy's support. Not anymore. She doesn't want to fight.
She doesn't know if she can hold back, either.
Jackal pulls out a chair for her. "Sit down." He's looking over Juvia's shoulder at a table across the club. Juvia knows it's Gray's eyes on her back, the way he looks at her is so telling. She can almost feel his ire growing beyond what the club can hold, filling the room and spilling out to poison the night, too. Another evening that will not end the way Juvia wants it to. Why is everything working against her?
Juvia doesn't sit. "You could go to Ultear's table," she says to Meredy.
"Why would I do that?" Meredy asks, the question prosed to lead Juvia into a trap where Meredy can justify being angry with her again.
Juvia merely clutches her tray, feeling insignificant and worthless. It's not fair that one person has the power to make her feel so vapid and small with just a few words that seem innocuous.
"Does that invitation extend to us?" Jackal is still looking for a way to sting her. He's as relentless as a hornet.
Meredy surprises her, though, staring at Juvia with a clarity she hasn't in days. "You're acting weird. Did something happen?"
Juvia is bombarded by all the bad of the last few days. She wants to talk about Jose's hands. She wants to warn Meredy to stay away from him. She wants her advice. She wants her friend.
Meredy's eyes narrow. "Have you been taking your medication?"
Juvia is suddenly so frustrated, she cannot help but growl beneath her breath. "Of course."
"Then what the hell is wrong with you?"
The swing in Meredy's demeanour leaves Juvia gawping. "What?"
Mard, who hasn't said anything for several moments, looks at Meredy and suggests, "Let's go for a smoke."
"We're talking," Juvia protests.
Mard startles as though he's forgotten she's there. How inconsequential she must seem because instead of answering her, he stands and pulls Meredy up with him.
Desperately, Juvia pleads, "Can we go for a walk or something?" But Meredy doesn't respond and soon, she's far enough away, Juvia wouldn't have heard it, either.
"Sorry, boo-boo," Jackal calls her that annoying nickname again as he stands to follow Mard and Meredy. "Guess you're not even worth a goodbye." He holds out his arm in invitation. "You wanna come? Get a few more licks in?" He waggles his brows suggestively and Juvia can't tell if he's talking about their fight or something else.
"Stay away from me," Juvia warns him.
"Else? What do you have to threaten me with?" He's practically salivating at the thought.
Juvia turns from him in disgust. She's never known anyone so eager for a confrontation. Except maybe Gray, who has risen from his seat, leaving Jellal behind, and is cutting his way through the club to their sides.
Movement on the upper level catches Juvia's eye. Jose is looking down on her, and at his side is the brutish-looking Gajeel. They share some words. Gajeel smiles and somehow manages to make the motion chilling.
Juvia hurries away from Jackal to Gray's side, meeting him in the centre of the club. People move around them, talking, laughing, drinking, oblivious to Juvia and Gray, or uncaring. She catches his hand, feeling an electric pulse race through her. She shouldn't like it when he looks so murderous, but she does, and she feels powerful, too, easing him back the other way, toward the table.
"What did he say to you?" Gray doesn't seem to realize the table is now empty, Jellal is gone. His attention is solely on Juvia. He studies her as though looking for new cuts or bruises, an excuse to go after Jackal again, though they both know Jackal didn't touch her.
"Nothing important." Juvia stands on her tiptoes and looks throughout the club for Jellal's blue hair, but the lighting is low, and the people are thick now; the place is getting fuller by the second. "Jellal is gone."
Gray's mouth curls into a frown. He does the same thing as Juvia, searching over the crowd. It's easier for him, but even Gray cannot spot him.
Someone opens the back door and in strobes red and blue light. Gray's mouth gets thin. "Goddamn. What now?" He begins pulling Juvia across the floor, thoughts still on Jellal as he pushes through the crowd gathering outside. Juvia forgets she's working, mesmerized like everyone else by the flashing of police lights. Her heart is in her throat, imagining all the things that could bring them to Phantom. Logically, she knows it's not likely Jellal causing trouble, he's hardly been gone long enough, but still…
The crowd is thick all over Phantom's patio, no one quite daring to go any closer to the scene. Gray elbows his way out and Juvia is right behind him; their thoughts are in the same place and the anxiety between them is palpable.
The anxiety doesn't slow for Juvia when she breaks through the crowd and sees the police standing around a familiar white car. Mard leans against it, handcuffed and looking furious, which Juvia thinks is deserving, but Meredy is beside him in a similar predicament. Her cheeks are wet with tears and she's nodding her head when the police ask her something.
Juvia moves closer without realizing what she's doing, until she can hear Meredy say, "It's the truth. It was mine, not his."
The officer responds, "We'll sort it out at the station." He leads her to the police car and puts her in the backseat.
Mard is less compliant, saying, "You heard her. It wasn't my fucking dope, it was hers. Let me go."
Juvia doesn't believe him for a second. "He's lying!" she shouts.
The officer turns a withering glare on her. "Do you know these people?"
It's Gray's turn to grab Juvia's hand and hold her back. "We don't know anything," he says, and he sounds so calm, and so collected, Juvia doesn't know how to rebuke him. He pulls her back, closer to the crowd. The officer gives them his back, deciding he has his hands full with a spitting mad Mard.
"What are you doing?" Juvia tries to pull her hand out of Gray's. "They're arresting Meredy."
"And you don't know why," Gray says, holding her steadfast. "You don't want to be involved."
"She's my friend!" Juvia can hardly see for the tears. Both cruisers turn off their lights and start to pull away. Whatever chance she had of catching them is slipping away.
"Don't let her mistakes fuck your life up, too." Gray's so cold, so clinical, his observation steals Juvia's breath. She wants to be mad at him, simply because of proximity, but there is still something rational in her that knows what he says is true.
"Besides," Gray adds when he's sure she isn't going to go full wild cat on him, "She's a minor. They probably won't even charge her."
"You don't know that."
He laughs without mirth. "Trust me."
The strange thing is, she wants to; he's confident enough for both himself and Juvia.
Juvia sighs and squeezes her eyes closed. "I want to leave." And not just the club, she wants to leave the pain and the uncertainty behind, too, though she shoves those thoughts away before they've fully formed because she's frightened of what, or who, she will have to give up to achieve the tranquillity she desires. She's already given up her home and the man that raised her, does she need to leave behind the last of her family, too?
Guest: A million heart-eyed emojis for you. Thank you! Tu es la magnifique, I don't deserve you, but I am greedy and selfish and will accept your laudations voraciously and be thankful I've found such an amazing reader.
Morrigan: That's okay, you're busy, never apologize! I'm not sure if Jose will be stabbed in the throat, but maybe I'll do a little spin-off where he gets hit by a bus or something, just so we can have some justice in the world.
Okay. Mira and Ultear—ultimate sexy, no? That was Ahri's big brain that gave me that child.
Thanks for reading :)