Magnolia, March, Year X792
My heart tore in half as that word left his lips. No. He was never in love with you, you stupid blonde. Get it through your head. No one but Layla loves you.
I had to accept it. He lied to me on my 16th. He lied and took my innocence. I knew it. I knew that I couldn't trust him. I shouldn't have been so fucking naive and stupid. He was a guy. A man. They were all the same. Just like women. Women were naive and rotten, and men were lying pricks.
I guess no one was perfect.
My emotion and composure were both running thin but I continued with the interview. Not letting something like that get to me. It seemed to have gone forever, but we finally got through the fan questions. "Now, I believe you were all doing a live performance for us?"
The group nodded, the lot of them, including Natsu, seeming to get 10 times more excited. "Yeah, we are." Levy grinned, sitting upright. "We're actually going to be playing a song that Natsu and I wrote. Isn't that right, Natsu?" She bumped Natsu's shoulder with her small, closed fist and got the pink haired boy to nod with the fakest enthusiasm I had ever seen.
I looked to the camera and grinned. "While they set up, here's the weather forecast for the rest of the upcoming week:" behind the camera, I saw Jason counting down from three with his fingers so I wouldn't stop talking or smiling until the camera was off. "Do you guys need any help?" I asked Levy, Gray, Natsu and Erza as they fixed up the stools and instruments.
Shaking his head, Natsu threw me a coldly familiar word. "No." Without saying anything else he grabbed his Cajon (a box for drummers to use in acoustic sessions. Each side made a different sound) and sat on it, adjusting the mic stand. Gray tuned the strings of his guitar as Erza did the same with her bass, and Levy sat patiently on the middle tool, doing simple vocal warm-ups. I noticed Natsu doing the same. Did he sing in all of their music? I mean, he mentioned he was a backup singer earlier but I didn't expect to hear him sing today.
"What song are you performing?" I asked Gray, who was closest to me. He ran a hand through his jet black hair and gave me a smirk.
"It's called Wherever You Are." He answered. "It's a real tear jerker. I think Natsu and Levy were in rough places when they wrote it." Gray was much taller than me and towered over me, so he couldn't look at me properly without taking a step back. "I missed you, Lucy. It wasn't the same without you and your short temper around every day."
Gray was a close friend of Natsu and mine when we were in high school, so he was there pretty much all the time since we were 13. He and Natsu didn't start playing music together until they were both 15, and then joined up with Erza and Levy the year before they left.
"Cameras are on in 30 seconds." Jason called to us all. "Lucy, you'll be introducing the song they're performing to give them a little extra time. Is that okay?" I nodded and sat in my seat, turning it slightly to face the camera again.
"Three, two,"
"Welcome back, Fiore." I sing-songed to the camera. "You're in for a treat, this afternoon. If you're only just tuning in, we're joined today by Fairy Tail. So here they are, with their original song, Wherever you Are."
Gray began to strum at his guitar, the others not touching their instruments. I could already tell that it was gonna be a touching song.
After a short intro, Levy began to sing. [wherever you are by 5sos I recommend listening to it rn]
"For a while we pretended that we never had to end it, but we knew we'd have to say goodbye. You were crying at the airport, when they finally closed the plane door. I could barely hold it all inside."
I almost audibly whimpered at the lyrics. I watched Levy and waited for her to start singing again, but it was Natsu who sung next.
"Torn in two. . . . And I know I shouldn't tell you, but I just can't stop thinking of you"
My breath was taken from my chest, snatched like a stolen possession. Natsu's voice had gotten so much better since when we were young. He sounded amazing.
Levy began to sing with him through the chorus, and I smiled a small grin, their voices sounding perfect together.
"Wherever you are. You, wherever you are. Every night I almost call you, just to say it always will be you. . . . wherever you are."
At this point, they were all playing their instruments and it sounded wonderful. I always avoided listening to their interviews or any of their music. I didn't want to cry on the lounge or in my bed, and I didn't want to risk having Layla or Loke find me.
"I could fly a thousand oceans," Natsu sang. "But there's nothing that compares to what we had, and so I walk alone"
Levy joined in. "I wish I didn't have to be gone, maybe you've already moved on, but the truth is I don't want to know." For a moment, Natsu's eyes raised to meet mine and the breath in my throat hitched. We're these lyrics. . . . about me?
"Torn in two. . . . And I know I shouldn't tell you, but I just can't stop thinking of you, wherever you are. You, wherever you are. Every night I almost call you, just to say it always will be you, wherever you are."
"You can say we'll be together, someday. Nothing lasts forever, nothing stays the same. So why can't I stop feeling this way?" Natsu sang as he looked into my eyes, and as I noticed his eyes being to water, my own started doing the same.
Torn in two. . . . And I know I shouldn't tell you, but I just can't stop thinking of you, wherever you are, you, wherever you are. Every night I almost call you, just to say it always will be you. . . . Wherever you are."
The song finished so abruptly, that I hadn't even noticed Jason signalling me to start speaking into the camera. I was dazed and crying, and as I looked to the crew with their expectant faces looking from me to the camera, I got up as quickly as I could, apologized straight to the camera and ran from the room with my bag clutched in my hand.
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"Lucy!" I heard a mans voice calling to me and it only drove me to run away quicker. "Lucy, please stop!" They were persistent, I'll give them that. But I didn't stop, I only continued to rush from that room. From everyone. From Natsu.
I supposed it was no use, though, as a large hand gripped my shoulder and pulled me back, spinning me around like we were dancing together. As I observed the man's face, I was somewhat relieved, yet disappointed when I saw Gray staring at me. Thank God it wasn't Natsu. But if it was. . . .
"Leave me alone, Gray." I huffed, pulling my shoulder from his grip. His hand ran through his jet black hair as if it was a second nature to him. What a second nature, I thought. It just makes him look really fucking hot.
"No." Gray snapped, taking my small arms in his hands. "Why would you run off like that in the middle of the interview? Jason said that we still had five minutes of question time left, but since you ran off I had to explain that our interview was cut short and that the fans can expect another one some time soon."
I looked at him without saying a word. My eyes must have been puffy and red, from all the crying I had done. We were standing outside the building with some attention building up around us. "Isn't that Gray?" "Fairy Tail Gray? Gray Fullbuster?!" "Who's that cow he's with? She must think she's so cute with those tits she's got."
"I. . ." I didn't know what to tell him. What could I tell him? "That song. . . . Do you know who Natsu wrote it about?"
Gray's emotions softened and he sighed. "I know Levy wrote her lyrics about Gajeel, some dude from a school she didn't go to." He avoided eye contact with me as he dropped his hands from my arms. "They were sweethearts. . . . But as far as what Natsu wrote, I always assumed it was about a girlfriend he had back home. Why? Do you know who it was written about?"
I stayed silent, realising how conceited it would have sounded if I just said it. I didn't look at him until I heard him take a deep breath. He kind of hissed, too, like he just burned his finger or something.
I looked up into his widened eyes and he pointed at me. "It was written about you, wasn't it?"
I shrugged and sighed, loosening my body. I hadn't realised how tense I was until he finally said those words I had been dreading. "I. . . . I think so." I whispered, letting my eyes wander up to his and snapping back down instantly, his stare too intense.
Gray groaned and let out a sudden yell, punching the wall closest to him. He mumbled a huge jumble of words under his breath and I tried to get closer to him to calm down. "Why? Why does Natsu always get what I want? Why is he such a selfish piece of shit?"
His mumbles began to scare me and I took his hand. "Are you alright, Gray?" I worriedly stared at him, trying to get him to look at me. "Please. . . . Calm down."
Gray's frustration was so intense I could see it in his eyes. I remember when we were friends before he and Natsu left, Gray had a very short temper. He was never very good when it came to staying calm. At one point, he got so angry at his own past he almost punched me. It was terrifying - Gray was one of the most muscular and scary guys in my whole school, other than Laxus Dreyar.
"Lucy," as his breathing slowed down and steadied, Gray spoke. "Have lunch with me some time."
I jumped at the suggestion, my eyes wide and my whole body stiff. He wanted to go out with me? "You wanna... go on a date?"
A deep blush creeped to his face and he waving his hands around in the air, his head shaking back and forth like a crazy person. "No!" He denied. "Nothing like that! I just. . . . Wanna catch up, you know? It's cool if you-"
"Okay." I firmly decided, smiling up at the tall raven haired man. "I'll love to catch up. I work all week and my daughter goes to school. . . . So if you call me we can organise a time to see each other." I wrote my number down on a small, ripped piece of paper from my bag and handed it to him.
Gray stared at it before taking it from me, his fingers brushing against my own. "Thanks. . . ."
"But," I interrupted him, not finished with what I was saying. "If you try anything, I'll leave you with a hand mark redder than hell on your face and hair wet as the ocean. Got it?"
A smirk took Gray's lips and he nodded. "Where did this come from? You were a shy little baby one minute ago."
"I'm pretty much fucked in the head," I chuckled. "You never know how I'm gonna feel."
Gray and I shared a silence between us that wasn't awkward, per say, it was more of a calming and much needed silence. We hadn't seen each other in five years, after all. We couldn't just bombard each other.
I suppose Gray thought otherwise, as he closed the large gap between us and flung his arms around my waist, holding me close to him in the warmest hug I've had in five years.
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of course, if you didn't realise, the song in this chapter doesn't belong to me. It's called Wherever You Are and it's by 5 seconds of summer.
Don't forget to favourite and follow this story and me! Send in your reviews and opinions and I'll make sure to reply to whoever I can :))
