The door sighs open with a tiredness Gray feels deep in his bones. He hasn't been on this earth for too many years but is exhausted. Just drained. A glass of water once full, tipped onto its side, left to evaporate.
He remains facing the mirror, hands working the buttons on his shirt, struggling to cover the ugly black marks he stares at every night.
At first, the movements are automatic. Grab the fabric, slide the button through the hole. He's always taking on and pulling off his clothes. This isn't any different. Except, he is rushing, keeps missing the buttonhole, and every time he does so, he risks the depth of his dive into this black magic being known. She cannot know how bad it's gotten.
The more he panics, the further the marks stretch in response, until it's not just his chest and his neck that is tattooed with the fathomless black, but his face, too. Until he cannot cover it with clothing. He uses the shadows to hide in, masking his visage while unable to do anything about the cold seeping uncontrolled through the room.
"Gray?"
"Go away." Even his voice sounds chilled, different, not exactly his. "You can't come in."
But she is already in. The door is already closed. Her feet are already whispering over the birch wood floor.
"Show me?"
Gray pulls away even further. "Porlyusica said no one should be around me."
"She said you should try not to get upset when you're around people," Lucy corrects airily. She doesn't care about this danger, has never seen him as a threat.
"It's the same thing."
"Are you going to spend the rest of your life angry and frustrated? I thought you were trying to control it?"
Her words pricking like needles only make the wound of black magic grow. It encompasses his eye, and downward, stretches across his chest like a bloodstain. Gray clutches the hem of his shirt like when he was small, on the verge of a full-on tantrum. His mother would look down at him with her stone-coloured eyes, Gray's eyes, and wait patiently for him to scream, to cry, knowing he'd always wear himself out.
These fits are much more dangerous than the ones he had as a child. These fits can kill. Take everything he cares about, encase it in a deep, deadly freeze.
He releases his shirt as if that can break the connection between who he was and who he's become.
"You need to leave." The air is crystallizing before his eyes. He can feel soft flakes of ice against his lips as he speaks.
Lucy draws nearer, and help him, he doesn't fight any harder, is afraid to, in case he hurts her. "Will you look at me?"
"I don't want to."
Gray can hear her catch her breath, hold it, so she doesn't sigh and demean what he's feeling. She lets it out quietly and moves in front of him, between him and the mirror, and then into the dark corner he's closed himself in.
Now they're so close, Gray can see the goosebumps rise on her skin in the faint light of the candle that burns behind her. It limns her in its soft glow. Her hair is down, kissing her bare shoulders.
She holds out her hand. He can't stop her, afraid to move, more afraid than she is as she lays her fingers against his cheek, first on the pale skin, and then on the black mark his father left him with. This curse. This gift. This power to be as villainous as he needs to be to save the ones he loves.
"It's okay," Lucy says. It's okay this has happened. It's okay he's scared. It's okay he's angry and determined to be self-righteous with this evil power. It's okay she's touching him.
Nothing is okay.
He feels the pull of fear like a tug on a tooth until it is loose and infected and swollen and too painful to exist alongside. Part of him wants to rip it out, to feel nothing. Part of him wants to wrap himself in this pain and find END. He is a man divided. Cold, with hot blood in his veins, furious to the point where he is frozen. He cannot live like this. He cannot—
"Breathe," Lucy whispers. She's closer than ever now. He can feel the line of her body centimetres from his own, the soft cotton of her clothes, and the skin, warm beneath. "You're okay."
Which is the exact thing Porlyusica says to him, except Lucy says it in a much more convincing way. Breathe.
"It's just us here, and you're fine. You're not going to hurt anyone; you're not going to hurt yourself. You're okay."
Her voice is sugar water for the parched. Gray drinks it down greedily because it's the only thing that's felt real in days. The guild is gone, Magnolia's streets are empty. This apartment is a tomb. Only Lucy remains, and Porlyusica, the last vestiges of his life here in Magnolia. The last staples holding him together. He is split between holding them, as he did the bottom of his shirt, to embrace who he was, or letting them go, and fall deeper into this Gray he does not know. The devil. The villain.
Without his realizing it, Lucy has gotten closer still. For all her bravery, she moves slow, careful, wary of setting him off. She runs her fingers up his arm. The contact is electricity, hot, liquid, almost. She is so warm. He is so cold. His shirt pleats beneath her touch.
At his bicep, she flattens her palm and slides it across his back, pulling him into her, pulling him into the light of the candle, where she can see the ugly stain of magic. Lucy's eyes flick over his skin, never lingering on the marks. Then she pulls him closer.
Gray goes, limp, almost falling into her as she gathers him into her body, wraps her arms around his shoulders, holds him as he hasn't been held in an eternity. It feels good, the press of another body, hot skin he can shed some cold onto, another to help him stand against this burden. He feels so brittle. He feels so lost.
"You don't have to be afraid." Lucy presses her cheek against his shoulder where his shirt folds away from his neck. He can feel her hot breath. Now he's the one covered in goosebumps. Being in Lucy's arms feels like sitting beneath the sun, sheltered, on a blustery March day. It feels like love, the way love feels when it's familiar, old, like a shirt worn thin but comfortable, soft, leaving your body with freedom to change.
Gray makes his frozen body move. He puts his arms around Lucy, returning the embrace.
They stand that way for minutes, neither moving, breathing shallowly, Lucy holding him tight and Gray holding her tighter. Making this connection was difficult and now that they're here, he doesn't want to let her go.
It must end, though, and despite his earlier protests and reluctance, Lucy is the one that pulls back, a hairsbreadth of room between them, just enough that she can look up into his face. There's no hiding now, so Gray looks down at her through his lashes. Her eyes are a nice colour of brown, shot through with tawny strings of light. On her nose is a sprinkling of freckles. He can count them. Will, maybe.
Lucy looks away from his eyes and focuses on his mouth instead. It's Gray's turn to hold his breath, count the seconds, remain perfectly still as she moves in, kisses his cracked lips.
Lucy is the candle in the night. She pushes to the edges his dark thoughts, warms the ice in his veins until it's a trickling stream until he is at least part human.
Gray touches her bare skin where he can—her throat, her arms, the splash on her back.
"Here," she whispers between kisses and slides the zipper down on the front of her shirt. She is wearing nothing beneath and her skin when it touches his is as pleasurable as a fire on a cold winter night. He holds her tighter, feels the devil retreat further.
He moves his kiss from her mouth to her neck and Lucy does sigh now. It fills him with life; he hasn't felt this way in a long time. Is desperate to keep feeling it, and is pleased when Lucy starts to return his touch, first over his clothes, then beneath, opening the shirt he tried so desperately to close and skimming her fingers over his skin as though the temperature doesn't bother her.
The mirror wobbles on its bracket when Gray pushes Lucy against it. He doesn't even remember moving, but here they are. His breath doesn't fog the glass and when he looks at himself in the mirror, the devil's mark is as thin as a razorblade, scoring his eye, making it black as night.
Lucy again puts herself between him and the mirror, grabbing his face and turning it toward her. "Kiss me here." She pushes his head back to her collarbone. A wild thrill moves from Gray's head to his feet, banking his thoughts as one might a fire. He wants this. Has always known he's wanted this. And now…
He kisses her where he likes and tries not to think about anything else.
Lucy's cries are muted; her lips are closed; her breath comes noisily from her nose. Her hands curl in his hair and pull him closer, encourage him to slide his tongue across the raised edge of her breast even when he thinks he should stop; how could she want this with him? As he is now? After everything?
But Lucy doesn't want him to stop, and when he tries, she does the work for him, pulling off the rest of her clothes, and then his, even when he protests. She touches the razorblade black on his chest, she kisses it, she makes it feel part of him, not separate, as he's been telling himself.
He kneels on the ground before her when she tells him, rigid, at attention, feeling like a man asking for penance. Begging for guidance. Pleading for a hand to hold in the dark. And here is Lucy, not a saviour, but a candle with an unwavering flame, lowering into his lap, guiding him through the night.
A/N:
STILL ON HIATUS. But I wanted to do something fun for Graylu weekend. Then I forgot because I suck. Then I saw Ahri's awesome art on Twitter and thought I can throw something quick together. And here you go. It took me an hour to write and I only spent like twenty minutes editing so don't judge too harshly.
K
ILY bye