Category: Romantic Fluff, Drama

Characters: Gray Fullbuster, Lucy Heartfilia

Requested By: Anonymous User

Alternatum to Heartbeat

Gray's expression was stony and serious as he leaned over Lucy's shoulder to stare down at the scratched, frayed tome that currently rested on her lap- the book of E.N.D. From his limited understanding, it was unequivocally linked to Natsu's being; thankfully, Lucy had stopped him from destroying the book and thus snuffing out the dragon-slayer's life. The bastard was annoying as all hell sometimes, but he shuddered to think that he could have just erased his existence like that due to some hasty actions. He watched as Lucy's milky-white hand brushed over its uneven, rune-carved surface, the hand that was marred by scrapes and abrasions from their hard-fought war… the war that still had yet to end.

"I'm going to open it now," Lucy breathed. They had decided to do so, because whatever was contained within could potentially save Natsu and defeat Zeref once and for all. He glanced over to see Lucy's expression set in that determined grimace of hers, which caused him to smirk. Once Lucy got down to business, nothing could stop her. With a quick flick of her hand, she flipped the book open. For a second, it seemed like the world took a deep breath; the wind died down and nothing moved; everything just hung in limbo. Once the second passed, though, the world released a silent shriek. Light exploded from the book, along with a fierce wind that send Gray's tousled locks to flipping. One of Lucy's pigtails whipped up to slap him across the forehead, and he batted it away just in time to see the inked characters in the book actually moving. As if carried by the wind like leaves dancing across concrete, they swirled upwards before spreading out in constantly moving, interlocking chains of words.

"What are they?" he whispered and looked down at her. Her face was turned upwards, her brown eyes scanning the streaming letters to try and make sense of them; cast in the ethereal glow pouring from the volume, Gray thought briefly that she looked like an angel, sent from Heaven to wage war on Earth against the forces of evil. It was an ironically accurate metaphor.

"They're all… about Natsu…" she frowned in response. Her eyebrows narrowed into acute arcs as she concentrated on the lettering. Suddenly, a concerned shock bloomed in her face, but before Gray could ask why, the world heaved in a savage earthquake. The light and words vanished as the book was flung from Lucy's lap and shut in mid-air; Gray and Lucy soon followed. On instinct, he grabbed ahold of her and turned his body such to cushion her fall. He gritted his teeth as his bare back struck the rough cobblestone of the street, but aside from a few scrapes and bruises, he would escape unharmed. Lucy remained cushioned in the muscles of his arms and chest. Once the shaking stopped, she looked up, blinking.

"What was that?" complained Happy, who had ended up sprawled out on his belly next to him.

"It came from the guild. No doubt it's Natsu," Gray surmised. He loosened his grip on the Celestial Wizard as she sat up, holding her head as she recovered from the severe jostle. She then gasped and crawled off of him to scramble over to the Book of E.N.D., once more flipping it open to spill the script of Natsu into the air. Gray sat up slowly, his muscles stiff from the previous battles and the latest jarring, and incidentally glanced up at the words. He was alarmed to find that random characters were begin to pop out of existence. "Lucy, what's happening?!" he demanded, startled.

"Natsu is injured, very badly!" Panic struck Gray's heart like an ice spear of his own making. If Natsu was mortally wounded, they stood no chance against Zeref, period… And his friend could die. He crawled on his hands and knees over to Lucy just as she whipped out a magic pen and sat up on her knees, poised like a conductor ready to direct a symphony. "If I rewrite the missing characters, I think I can save him!" Gray didn't even bother asking if she had memorized them, because he knew she did. He sat down beside her, watching as she began to hastily scrawl the magic characters back into place. He then clenched his teeth and looked down at his hands as he balled them into fists. I can't do anything…

He jerked up as he heard Lucy scream in pain. Her back was arched into a sharp curved and her eyes wide as they stared unseeing up at the swirling mass of text; her hand, still clutching the magic pen, was dyed a bright, burning red with snake-like tendrils slithering up her arm.

"Lucy!" he gasped as she groaned in agony. Her entire body was quaking more than the earth had been a few minutes ago. When he put a hand on the small of her back to steady her, she recoiled with a hiss, though there were no signs that the dark magic had invaded there.

"My body… It's burning!" came the hoarse whisper. Her face scrunched up in pain and she fell to the side, collapsing against Gray. As their skin met, he could feel the sweat that had already coated her paling body.

"It must be a rebound! Natsu's demon magic is trying to overtake her body…" Happy cried as he nervously fluttered around the panting Celestial Wizard. Gray held her tenderly, knowing that his touch was sending shockwaves of pain through her feeble body, and pulled a few sweat-slicked strands of blonde hair through her face. Just as he was about to take the magic pen from her, she gripped tightly onto Gray's shoulder and sat herself up.

"Lucy! Don't overexert yourself!"

"I can do this," she responded. The strength had returned a little to her voice, but it was still very obviously strained. "I just have to finish re-writing this section, and I think I can change Natsu's fate." She swallowed before raising her arm again, and her hand began to twirl about as she once more began scribing with the magic pen. Gray watched her with a mixture of concern and pride. Lucy's strength never ceased to amaze him; it was different than the strength of those like himself and Erza and Natsu… A quiet, unassuming one, but a strength nonetheless, one that blazed when their own strengths failed… one that enable Lucy to do things they could never dream of doing. A faint smile ghosted his lips. Well, there's something I can do for her at least. He conjured up a small sphere of swirling wind around them to cool the air and hopefully stave of the burning heat that was poisoning her body. In a matter of seconds, she relaxed, a look of mild peace pervading her features. "Thanks," she said, tossing him a gentle smile.

"You got it. Now let's save our idiot."

They sat in silence as Lucy continuously reworked the magical text. Gray watched in discomfort as the curse crawled further and further up her arm, its thin tendrils branching up over her chest to seemingly entangle her heart. Gray knew that he could draw out the magic with his demon-slaying arts, but it bothered him because he knew that it was excruciatingly painful. Even with Gray's maelstrom of cooling air, Lucy was still sweating profusely and drawing shallow, labored breaths. Her expression grew increasingly more exhausted until it seemed that she was struggling to keep her eyes open. Finally, when he thought that she couldn't take any more, she slumped over with an agonized groan and dropped the pen.

"I did it… It's done…" she wheezed. The letters, now completed, spiraled back down into the book and it flipped shut of its own accord. Lucy took a moment to catch her breath, doubled over with her hand clutching at the area over her heart, before she weakly looked up towards the book. "It's disappearing!"

"Does that mean it didn't work?! Is Natsu-?" He didn't finish the thought. Happy and Lucy both began to cry at the implications.

"I don't know…" she admitted with a frightened sniffle. "I did all I could… Now we just have to wait and see…" With shaky arms, she pushed herself back up, and Gray rushed in to help her back into a sitting position. Her head flopped back against his shoulder, her sweaty locks streaking his skin in the salty liquid. He didn't care, though. Once more, he swept hair from her face and smiled softly down at her.

"You did great, Lucy." She returned the sentiment with a serene, tired smile just as the book vanished. He only took his eyes off her for a second to watch the last bits of light from the tome twinkle out of existence… and that second was all it took for it all to go absolutely, horribly wrong.

A strained gurgling noise left Lucy's throat. When his gaze shot back to her, both her hands were pressed against her chest over her heart, and her brown eyes were wide, wider even than the moment the dark magic gripped her body upon attempting to write in the Book of E.N.D. "Lucy?!" he cried and shook her violently. Her body limply jostled at his touch, like she was lifeless, her arms dropping to her sides. Happy's breath caught in his throat as Gray began to mutter her name under his breath, his voice gradually rising in pitch as she did not respond. He laid her down on her back, unsettled by the lifeless gloss in her unblinking eyes, and he ripped the bandages off his right arm. The demon-slayer magic blazed up his skin like black ink flooding paper, stretching up to his eye before becoming complete. He gripped Lucy's wrist and held it up. Her hand just flopped lifelessly in the air. "Hold on, Lucy, this'll fix you!" he whispered before forcibly drawing the magic out of her. The blood red stain on her skin receded as his demon-slayer magic gobbled it up eagerly like a monster devouring prey. However, even with the last dregs of the vile magic drained from her system, Lucy did not wake. She just laid there… Like she was dead.

As the thought his mind, Gray gasped and immediately pressed his ear to where her heart was. Instead of the steady beat of the organ drum, he heard nothing, just deafening, terrifying silence.

"No, no, no, no, no!" he cried as he shot back up and flipped his leg over her to straddle her waist. All measures of propriety and implications were aside, replaced by the cold rush of sheer panic. He leaned over and began frantically compressing her chest, trying to get her heart to start once more. "Come on, Lucy, you can't die on me now!" he shouted at her. Happy was standing above her head crying pitifully, which was bouncing up and down a little as he pushed hard into her sternum, over and over and over. Gray paused for a moment to lean over and grab her face, pushing her lips apart before covering them with his own and exhaling deep into her mouth. He then flew up and began pumping her chest again. "Come on, Lucy!" he grunted, already beginning to sweat with exertion. How long had it been? Thirty seconds? A minute? He knew she couldn't survive long without getting her heart going again.

"Come on! Come on! Come on! COME ON!" he screamed at her as there was no response. He wasn't sure when he began to cry, but very soon he was aware of the painful stinging in his eyes and the wetness rolling over his cheeks. "Don't die. Please, don't die," he begged her and again leaned over to breathe into her mouth. Instead of getting up to start compressions again, he lingered against her lips for a moment, near his breaking point. "I love you, Lucy, please don't leave me!"

He was an idiot. Why hadn't he realized it sooner? Of course he loved her. It was so obvious, in the way his heart pounded when he saw her, in the flutter in his chest when she smiled, in the way he thought her voice was pure music. He loved her, and now she was gone, and he would never have the chance to tell her. With a broken sob, he forced himself to sit back up and began laboriously attempting to resuscitate her though it was agonizingly painful to do so. Every breath he drew stung his heaving lungs. Every push made his muscles scream in protest. Yet he kept on, in the feeble hope that it would work. He repeated her name like a mantra, a chant that might instill life in her. His strength began to fail and he half-leaned, half-flopped over to give her one final breath.

Suddenly, she heaved under him, and he felt her mouth drawing in a deep, desperate breath. Her back arched as she began coughing and moaning in pain, but Gray was beyond stupidly relieved to notice. As he sat back up, he held his arms around her in a tight hug and pulled her up with him and buried his face into her golden hair as he began to sob quietly.

"Lucy… Lucy…" It was hard to get her name out with how intensely his voice was breaking. His body thunderously quaked, still facing the aftereffects of the fear that had gripped him only a few seconds ago. Lucy's hands weakly slipped up his back up to his shoulder blades.

"G-Gray…" Almost as if to reassure himself, he put his hand on her neck. Sure enough, he could feel her thudding pulse in her carotid artery. "Gray… I'm okay… I'm okay…" she whispered in his ear. He could tell just by the thickness in her voice that she was crying too. He pulled back, his sobs transitioning into relieved laughter. Sure enough, there were glittering tears streaming down her cheeks. She was giving him that soft, sweet smile that made his heart melt. He swept a fingertip down her cheek, then traced her jawline, before his thumb gently swept across her lip. She parted them slightly, as if giving him permission.

And Gray sure as hell took it.

His hand snapped to the back of her head to jerk her forward. His lips smashed against hers in a passionate, desperate, sloppy kiss; if Lucy hadn't been short of breath already, he sure as hell would've swept it away. She fell against him, and he could feel her chest moving against his as she fought for breath, so caught up in the intense kiss. One of her hands snaked up to the back of his neck to tangle her fingers into his messy strands of dark hair, while Gray's migrated to her waist, fixing her in place as he pushed the kiss deeper. He drank her in, all her beautiful essence, and nearly got drunk off of it. Though he could have spent all day kissing her, the lack of oxygen began to burn his lungs, and he broke off the kiss, leaving them both panting hard. He only pulled back a few centimeters to gaze intently in her glittering brown eyes.

"I love you, Lucy," he murmured, again caressing her face. He felt the heat appear in her skin as she blushed.

"I-I love you too, Gray."

"Great, now that that's established, can you two stop making out?"

"NATSU?!" The two of them screeched in unison and whipped around. Sure enough, the pink-haired fire wizard was standing there a few feet away, beat within an inch of his life and very much alive. He was glowering at them, apparently very uncomfortable at their open display of affection. Happy was clinging to his best friend's leg nuzzling him tenderly. Identical blushed painted Gray and Lucy's cheeks as the romantic mood was immediately murdered by Natsu's arrival. Gray climbed of Lucy and stood, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. When he did, he stubbornly held her hand when she tried to pull it back. She blushed further, but made no move to resist further.

"Glad you're alive."

"Thanks, you too, asshole," Natsu sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He flashed Gray a cocky grin. "Now that this is a thing, you know I'm obligated to tell you to take care of her or I'll kick your ass, right?" Lucy began to admonish him for his rudeness, but Gray just grinned in return.

"'Course. Can we finish the ass-kicking at hand, first, though?" Natsu gave a big sigh and put his hand behind his head, toeing the cobblestone street.

"Yeah, yeah. Let's get goin'- and I better not catch you two sneaking off," he huffed with a playful smirk. Lucy went red to her ears and began yelling at him for his indecency, while Gray just smiled and turned to press a kiss into her hair. She instantly deflated into a gushy mess. Natsu cackled like a demon and whirled around to begin marching off toward the battleground.

"Hey, Lucy?"

"Hmm?"

"I meant that, y'know. I'll take care of you," he told her with a confident grin. She smiled happily back in response and nodded.

"I know- and I've got your back, too!" she grinned while holding up her fist. That was his Lucy, strong as ever. He chuckled and he intertwined their fingers before pulling her along in Natsu's direction.

"I know. Now let's finish what we started, eh?"

He tugged her along after the dragon-slayer, and for a brief second, swept his thumb up to her wrist to once again check her pulse. There is was, strong and steady. Gray would make sure that it would stay that way, because Lucy's heart belonged to him now, and he wanted it to beat for him forever.

Just like his would for her.