So the truth is, the lonely and pathetic truth is that I lied to Juvia that day she sat on my couch with a donut, and asked me if I'm happy. I'd shrugged, said I felt a kind of melancholy peace. Even with Juvia—who, if not pathetic, was certainly lonely—I had lied to her face. I'm not melancholy or at peace.
I'm grieving and stuck in the bad part of the suck sandwich that has been my life.
The country house, my dad—all of it a total suck-fest. But then came the era of Natsu, which was incandescently happy. Bounce-up-and-down happy. It was so happy that we found a cat and literally named it Happy because we couldn't contain our joy.
I mean, we were teenage runaways so of course we were sad all of the time. But it was so busy, bright and new that sadness barely registered. I know it's cheesy to say, but Natsu was like that: he consumed sadness and replaced it with something lighter and sweeter.
Plus, he kissed good. God did he kiss good. I miss a lot of things about him, but the kissing is high on my list.
But he left me with a promise to visit that lays flat and false in my empty apartment. So I work and cook, confiscate Erza's porn, drink coffee with Gray on weekend mornings.
And it's hollow, all of it. I'm hollow, too.
I think Gray notices sometimes when there's a lull in conversation. He's not a talker, so conversation lulls frequently. Natsu would have noticed, too. He would've wrapped an arm around my shoulder or done something silly to make me laugh. But Gray just watches me and passes me a cookie.
His cookies are decent, though, and I don't mind.
One Sunday, his method of comfort cracks. We're sitting on his counter nearly a month after Natsu left, idly debating the best way to contain Jellal during his bouts of demonism. I vote drugs, Gray votes cage. We agree to disagree. My mind drifts to Natsu and his MarioKart battles with Jellal, adorable in their intensity. Natsu played so hard he left permanent sweat stains on the couch. I remember how he looked coming home to me from Jellal's, pink hair plastered to his forehead, hands held out for snacks like Oliver Twist—
"Lucy. Lucy, hello?"
Shocked out of my reverie, I drop my cookie on Gray's pristine floor.
He's ever the gentleman about it. From somewhere he produces a dustpan and broom, efficiently sweeping away my crumbs. It's odd to see him do things so mundane in his leather jacket, all jutting cheekbones and scuffed Vans. He looks like a slightly failed cliche. Like he always means to go out and buy a motorbike, but instead stays home to do laundry.
"How old are you?" I ask him when he's finished. "Because if you are actually young, you're doing it all wrong."
Gray presses his lips together to hide a smile—which is about as close as I ever come to making him laugh. "Who's to say there's a right way to be young?"
"You're doing your evading-the-question-with-another-question schtick. It's not gonna work forever."
"Okay," he relents, settling back on the counter next to me. Slowly, he's gotten…not exactly expressive around me, but at least more relaxed. In his cramped apartment we have to sit close, so his leg bumps mine as he reaches for more food. It's nice. Companionable. Colder than Natsu, whose skin warmed me even through his clothes. "I'm twenty-two."
"Shucks, Grandpa. You could've fooled me." Secretly, I'm surprised; I actually thought he was younger. Most of the people in the building ran young—hell, Wendy is barely twelve and already a full-time renter.
"Hey," Gray protests. "I…do stuff. Lots of young, hip stuff."
At this, I snort into my coffee. "Yeah? Does your 'hip stuff' involve joint replacements?"
"Nah, they only start creaking when the rains come."
(I'm not thinking about how Natsu would respond, all sweet and gullible, with a furrowed brow and a weird hip swivel to make sure everything still worked okay. Or how he'd break out into that toothy smile when he realized I was teasing him and tackle me onto the couch, kiss me senseless and ask, "Can old guys do this?")
But hey, Gray made a joke! It's a rarest of rarities. I can be content with that.
When did my world become small and very sad?
This is when Gray does something very un-Gray-like: he voluntarily brings up the topic of human emotion by observing, "You don't seem okay."
"Who's to say there's such a thing as being okay?" I say, mocking him. He actually does laugh this time; it's a week of many firsts in our friendship, I guess. "But no, I'm not okay. And don't ask me what's wrong unless you really wanna hear it."
Gray doesn't respond for a long time. I imagine him weighing how much his random neighbor actually means to him, how much time he's willing to invest—and I regret bringing up my sadness at all. For the past few weeks, I've been clinging to this illusion of friendship to keep me stable, and I don't know if I can take one more thing falling apart.
But he's chock-full of surprises today. He shrugs and says, "Look, if you ever need to talk about something then I'll listen. Even if I'm not much help."
"You mean that?"
"I mean that."
"So…we're friends, then?"
Brow furrowed, he says, "Of course we are."
"Okay, good," I say, flooded with relief. Something off-kilter in me finally swings back into place, and I take what must be my first real breath in a month. It feels good, full. I take another and another. At some point my breathing turns into gasping, and that knot that has built inside me twists, as if it's trying to wrench itself out of my body, and my throat and eyes begin to burn until I realize that there's tears pouring from my eyes and snot running down my nose and chin.
Distantly, I think, But I'm not even sad.
But I can barely hear my own thoughts over the sound of my sobbing.
"Lucy," I hear Gray say as he pushes Kleenex towards me. "Hey. You're shaking."
"I'm—" Gulp. "I don't even know why—"
"It's okay," he says gently. He takes a tissue and brushes it against my cheeks, wipes snot away from my chin. "I get it. You have no idea how much I get it."
I can't stop staring at my hands, holding a trembling pile of tissues. Every part of me feels damp and disgusting and flushed with embarrassment. No matter how hard I try, the shaking refuses to subside, so I leave poor Gray hovering over me with nothing left to hand me, no words to calm me down. Eventually he squeezes my shoulder and just sits, waiting for the crying to settle.
Which it does, after several painful minutes. I cry myself empty. The burning extinguishes and that knot loosens enough for me to finally sit down beside Gray, eyes wet and red, face blotchy.
I still can't look at him. What could I possibly say to explain this?
I hear him clear his throat. "Are you, um…more okay now?"
"God. Yes," I say. "I'm so sorry. That was…I don't know what came over me."
A shoulder bumps mine. When I turn to look at Gray, his face is soft, sympathetic. "You don't have to be sorry."
"I just get…" I let out a shuddering breath. "It hasn't been a long time, y'know. Since Natsu left. But Natsu and me…we were…and I just—"
"You miss him?"
Hearing it put so simply makes me laugh through my residual tears. "I guess so. I mean yes, of course I do. But it's worse knowing that he's out there, maybe not even missing me."
"You don't know that."
"Hah." I can't help scoffing. "He's my best friend. I think he'd come see me if he did."
Gray shakes his head. "You're assuming that people do things that make sense. Lucy, people will never make sense. Even if they love you."
Especially if, I think, recalling the way he looked at Juvia. Still, I don't bring it up; I'm weary of talking about love and Natsu and all the things that make me sad. I just want to sit for a moment and let myself feel empty.
It's a blessed emptiness. For once, I don't ache; I just relish the absence of pain. Sometimes the feeling of pain vacating is the closest to happiness I can get.
"This is so fucking depressing, you realize that?"
"I realize that," he sighs.
"We're young, Gray. We should be out doing stuff. We should be on top of kegs or at clubs or earning degrees or something. And instead we're just—"
"—inside moping," he finishes. "But to be fair...stuff sucks sometimes."
"Stuff sucks."
And we're back to a mopey silence. Silence stretches between us like glue.
"You know what?" Gray says suddenly. "Let's do stuff. Outside. In the world. With people."
"What's even the point?" I mutter sullenly. "We don't even like people."
And he smiles at me, not big and toothy like Natsu would, but small and crooked and a little sad. "I like you, at least. And it can't hurt to try, right?"
He slips off the counter and holds out a hand to me, almost apologetically. It finally occurs to me that Gray is trying to cheer me up—and trying nervously. Like he's already convinced he'll fail. I think back to the first time I met him, when he asked me not to resent him for not being Natsu. Halfheartedly, I'd promised I would try.
As he patiently spent weeks with my hollow, grieving self, I hadn't bothered to try at all.
"It would be great to try," I tell him, glad to see his smile widen a little. I take his hand, push myself off the counter. We head for the door.
But before going through it, we stare at the opening like it's an endless abyss, in fearful awe of the outside. We're not outside people, me and Gray. Slowly we've grown accustomed to our loneliness and our little cocoon of crazy.
"So…we're really going out there? With people?"
Gray rolls his eyes at me. "You were the one who wanted to do 'young people' stuff."
"We're not young people, though," I protest. "Gray, we're more like old ladies. Or chubby, geriatric cats. Or wrinkled-up vampires who are allergic to sunlight—"
But I stop mid-rant when he gives me a rude shove out of the doorway, and keeps shoving, all the way down the stairs and through the building's exit. Before I know it, Gray and I have alighted like alien creatures in the land known as the Outside.
We look at each other in a moment of mutual satisfaction; we made it didn't we? Then we look at the nice weather and the streets filled with shops, the utterly normal townspeople doing utterly normal things.
We look back at each other and think, What the hell are we supposed to do now?
notes: ok yes this story is totally just writing catharsis for my roller coaster of emotions. and y'know what? it does the trick.
