Juvia didn't think much about it when Gray had stripped himself of his clothes so quickly that first time she'd met him in the night, during the rainfall. She didn't think much of it when he relieved himself of his shirt while helping her organize her house-- it was tough work. It was when Gray started to remove his clothes every time he walked through her door, a week after they'd gotten the innards of her home in order, that Juvia began to think him strange.
She asked him about it one day while they were chilling in her living room and watching cartoons. She admits that she could have done a better job of delivering it, though it was quite amusing to see his reaction.
"So do you make yourself at home in everyone's house, or just in mine?"
It took Gray a moment to catch onto what she meant. His face flushed immediately after. "Wait, please don't think I'm weird, I can explain!"
Juvia shrugged. "I'm waiting,"
"Well, it's kinda like this," Gray settled into the loveseat and put on a contemplative look, though Juvia could tell from the way he bashfully scratched at the back of his head that he was rather hesitant about sharing. "When I was younger, my parents died. I was sent to an orphanage and adopted real soon after. My new mom was a famous explorer who spent most of her time in the arctics, oddly enough,"
Gray looked down at his hands at the mention of his adoptive mother. He paused for a decent while and seemed almost like he needed comforting, but he hid his pain well. He continued. "Her name was Ur. She became my mentor. She trained me and another kid she adopted from the orphanage to withstand freezing temperatures by stripping down to our underwear in the snow. She made us do it everday, and blizzards were no exception.
"I get hot real easily because of that, and it's sort of become ingrained in my muscle memory; I strip down without meaning to or realizing it."
Juvia almost looked at him incredulously, then caught herself last second. It was a peculiarity, but honestly not something too out of the ordinary. She supposed she had the reason for his nonchalance about being naked in front of others, his easiness about stripping bare before her in the rain.
It dawned on her only briefly that they had been complete strangers at the time of their meeting, but they had already seen each other fully nude, and that that wasn't normal. At the very least, it wasn't appropriate.
"If we ever go out in public together, I won't have to worry about you streaking, will I?"
Gray responded with a tilt to his lips, "No promises."
Juvia laughed and decided that she liked this quirk of Gray's; it made him odd, and so she felt less self-conscious about her own oddities; it was easy and relieving to declare theirs an odd relationship.
Juvia also wondered about Gray's briefly mentioned dead parents, more about the unnamed boy he had been brothers with in cold solidarity. It was all very interesting. He would tell her all about them when he was ready, she knew; she could feel it in her bones.