GrayLu Week 2016 Day 2

Prompt: Déjà Vu

Still two days behind. But will catch up shortly!

Because I forgot last time... Standard disclaimers apply. Meaning that I don't own Fairy Tail, which is sad.

I also don't own the unnamed samurai game and anime referred to in this story. ;)

I hope you enjoy the chapter! And I appreciate all reviews, comments, faves and follows - or just having you read my work. \(^u^)~

Chapter 2 – Seeing Things
Fairy Tail University, Part I

Once upon a time, there was a courageous and beautiful Celestial Mage named Lucy Heartfilia. Although she was admired by a number of handsome and talented men, the hero who eventually won her heart was Natsu Dragneel, the pink-haired Slayer who eventually overcame his inability to recognize adult relationships and went on to become one of the most powerful members of the guild Fairy Tail. This story is not about them.

Lucy had been excited beyond words to be accepted at Fairy Tail University in Magnolia City. The University occupied most of the northern end of the city, with the oldest buildings occupying the land overlooking Lake Sciliora. Lucy was a transfer student, one of the few accepted directly into second year at the University on the basis of magical potential, good grades, and prior studies. Fortunately for her, she was a gregarious, pretty and warm-hearted young woman, and she generally made friends easily.

It was strictly a matter of good luck, however, that she had met one of her classmates while on her way to the University. Although she hadn't been sure what to make of the quick-tempered, but cheerful Natsu Dragneel when she had first spoken to him, Lucy had generously paid for his lunch when it turned out that he had run out of money. His table manners had been terrible, but two important things had come out of that meal: first, she had made friends with Natsu's constant companion, his blue, flying, talking cat, Happy; and second, Natsu and Happy had invited Lucy to join an elite team of upper year students who regularly participated in magical challenges either against other universities, or against actual magical threats that the University's Master deemed appropriate to the level of the students.

Technically, Natsu was the leader of the team; however, a large part of the team's power, and most of its organization, were provided by Erza Scarlet, a third-year student with exceptional magical and physical strength. Erza was said to be a direct descendant of the legendary (and many said entirely apocryphal) Erza "Titania" Scarlet of the original Fairy Tail Guild that had preceded the University. The other member of the team was the serious and unsmiling Gray Fullbuster, whose Ice-Make abilities and apparently cool personality made him the exact opposite of the excitable and literally fiery Natsu. Gray's one strange quirk was that he tended to take off his clothes when he was under pressure – Lucy had no idea why.

As Lucy got to know her team-mates and classmates better, she began to realize that although Gray was in some ways the person she knew least among those she considered her friends, he was most often the person that she went looking for when she just wanted to sit and study, or needed a break from the craziness of the dorm's common room. The odd thing was that she had no idea how he felt about having her show up at his apartment from time to time or settle down near him in the library.

Of course, Natsu had a tendency to orbit around his team-mates on a regular basis, and once he had been kicked out of his own apartment for having set the place on fire one time too many, he frequently came to stay with Lucy. She had protested loud and long that a co-ed dorm didn't mean guys and girls sharing the same room, but Natsu had just looked at her blankly. Lucy's room had been meant to be a double, but there was a spare bed and desk because her room-mate had never shown up; naturally, Natsu had looked upon the situation as an invitation from fate that it would be foolish to resist.

Naturally, everyone assumed that Natsu was Lucy's boyfriend, and she took a lot of teasing, but the truth was that Natsu was singularly unaware of relationships between the sexes. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that he seemed to be ignorant about relationships involving sex, regardless of gender. It occasionally made for awkward situations, since although they weren't romantically involved, Natsu would quite happily knock somebody across the room if he thought that they were making Lucy uncomfortable. As Lucy was an attractive and friendly young woman, this had in fact happened a couple of times, which had effectively limited the number of men willing to approach her as word had gotten around.

It didn't really matter, though. By the end of her second month at FTU, Lucy was coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that the person she really wanted to go out with was Gray, and he seemed to view her as nothing more than a team-mate who he cared about but "not in that way". Not that he ever said anything about it one way or the other.

It was about three weeks later when the team went on its first serious mission. They had been doing very well in the regular challenges against other schools, despite the fact that Lucy's powers as a Celestial Mage still weren't up to the level of the abilities of her companions. Consequently, they'd been allowed to choose a challenge from the notice board, and Erza had made sure to pick something with a reasonably good pay-out: there were financial rewards as well as course credit bonuses for successfully completing challenges.

It was morning on the second day of their trip, when the team found themselves with some free time on their hands. Erza had immediately elected to go shopping, declaring that it was nice to be out of Magnolia City, and the guys had headed off in different directions. Since Lucy had gone with Erza, by ten-thirty she found herself sitting outside a café guarding a table, a large slice of cake, and several bags, while Erza ran into "just one more store".

Lucy was sipping pensively at a cup of green tea with lemon when a shadow fell across the table. Looking up, she was surprised to see Gray. He pulled up a chair beside her and nodded to the slice of cake.

"Waiting for Erza?"

Lucy nodded mutely. She always seemed to get tongue-tied in Gray's company these days. As usual, she found herself admiring his tousled black hair and deep blue eyes… and it was difficult to ignore, since he was shirtless again, that his lean body was mostly made up of corded tendons and well-defined muscles. For some reason, Lucy wondered how he would look with FTU's signature crest imprinted on his skin, which is what they had supposedly done back when Fairy Tail was a guild rather than a school. She suddenly felt a disconcerting sense of déjà vu, as if she had sat with Gray before like this, waiting for Erza – and something had gone wrong.

Alarmed by the strength of the feeling, Lucy blurted out the first thing that came to mind:

"So, did you see Natsu and Happy while you were looking around?"

It seemed like a reasonably innocuous question, but for some reason she felt as though Gray – who had been about to speak, it seemed – drew back from her. She didn't imagine the slight drop in temperature as the blue eyes flicked to her face and then away.

"I think Natsu was checking out the local manga and anime store," Gray replied, so calmly that she wondered if she'd been wrong after all that he was upset. "He's hoping to find an anime collection about some old-world samurai who fought to the bitter end of some terrible war and all died in the process. I'm not sure why he wants it, though – it doesn't seem like his thing."

Lucy, still unsettled by Gray's unexpected presence so close to her – where was Erza anyway? – reacted more defensively than she usually would. Personally, she had enjoyed the anime, which was apparently based on a video game that had not yet been released in Fiore. She'd watched the movie version with Erza, but Lucy was sworn to silence on that matter.

"Well, maybe he doesn't turn his nose up at the romantic warrior ideal of fighting to the death to keep your promises and to protect the people that you love. And… there's a lot more battles and strategy and stuff than you would expect from an anime that everyone thinks is really aimed at women…"

Gray was staring at her, apparently dumbfounded.

"You think that Natsu is romantic? Although… I guess he probably watched the anime with you, right, since he stays with you all the time these days?" It seemed as though Gray wanted to add more, but he pressed his lips tightly together and looked away.

Lucy felt that same bizarre feeling of déjà vu, even as she started to sense a pit opening in front of her. Could Gray… possibly… be jealous? And what could she possibly do to sort things out? Because if he wasn't jealous, and just wanted to be friends, then confessing how she felt would just put a strain on the team – and the team was really important.

She found herself staring at Gray's chest again, and she had to blink this time to get rid of the overwhelming feeling that there should be a blue crest just there, on his chest just below his right shoulder. Her fingers brushed bare skin and she jerked her hand away.

"What the hell?!" Gray jumped up so fast that his chair overturned. He had his left hand over the spot that she'd touched and she could see ice crystals forming.

Lucy's cheeks were flaming red; she could feel the burn… so to speak. She looked down and saw that her hands were trembling. And something else. On the back of her right hand she could see a crest just like the one she kept imagining on Gray except pink. She shook her head and the image faded.

When she looked up, now shaking a little, Gray was standing not far from her, his arms crossed tightly over his bare chest. His face looked controlled, rather than calm – and he was down to his boxers. For obvious reasons, Gray favoured dark boxers that could be taken for shorts in a pinch. Lucy had a momentary vision of Gray without the boxers and felt her cheeks go scarlet again. To quote Gray: What the hell?!

Gray was watching her in total silence, his uncertainty communicated more by the lack of clothing and the occasional snowflake than anything else. Lucy was just letting her mind ramble off on a tangent – did he condense the water out of the air? – when a cheerful voice interrupted her thoughts. Sadly, it wasn't Erza.

"Hey Lucy! I found the DVDs! They didn't have the bluray though…" Natsu paused in mid-speech.

He looked from Gray to Lucy, his brow furrowing. Happy flew over to Lucy, who reached up automatically to give the cute blue cat a hug.

"Good anime, is it? Roman-tic?" Gray's tone was definitely snide.

"Look, stripper, it's good stuff and if you've been giving Luce a hard time over it I'll burn you right here and now!"

It's happening again, Lucy thought. Whatever it is. She hovered on the verge of telling Gray to stop insulting the anime and Natsu, but something made her bite back the words. It had taken almost three months, but she was slowly learning that things went better when she didn't interfere. Part of the problem was that she usually only got to say one thing before the inevitable fight broke out, so that whoever she supported first became completely insufferable and the other guy just got angrier.

"Good luck with that flame-brain! I'll freeze you solid. You have no control and less common sense. Plus, you're rude. We were having a conversation until you showed up."

"As if! You really suck at talking to Luce! You've been making her feel bad for weeks going all dark and broody and silent when she's with us! Emo-ice-prince! It's a good thing she had me around to make her feel better."

With a wordless snarl, Gray threw himself at the pink-haired Slayer. Natsu dropped his purchase and met Gray halfway with a fist lit up with fire.

Lucy gaped. For some reason, it had gone downhill very fast. She'd heard about the rivalry between the two – they'd been competing since grade school. But at the same time they were really good friends. Until now. As far as she could tell, they weren't holding back much, which would be a disaster really quickly unless –

"OH FOR THE GODS' SAKE!"

Erza arrived. She dropped two more bags beside the table and hurried over to where the street was beginning to buckle, as the air and earth couldn't decide between blast-forge hot and deep-freeze cold.

"That is ENOUGH!" Erza shouted.

Neither of the guys wanted to stop, but their fear of Erza's retribution overcame their desire to punch the living crap out of each other. Lucy drew a deep breath of relief. Then the weird déjà vu hit again. For just a moment she was convinced that Erza should be wearing armour – like, actual metal armour – instead of the silvery, flexible combat jacket that she favoured. The modern armour would stop a bullet and even protect Erza from a certain amount of magical damage. It was damn good stuff. Lucy had no idea whether the equally silvery metal armour – a cuirass? – would do any real good. It looked impressive though.

She blinked and the image faded. Her eyes strayed back to Gray, and sure enough, she could once again see the dark blue Fairy Tail crest imprinted on his chest. Lucy's heart gave a strange lurch. What the hell was wrong with her? This time she deliberately tried not to blink. For some reason, lean, muscled, serious-faced Gray wearing the blue mark against his tanned skin made it difficult for her to breathe. She had never felt like this about any man - had she?

Note: Well, it got longer than I'd planned for, but hope you're intrigued! Stay tuned for Chapter 3 - Prompt: Letters/Notes.

Thank you for reading! This story is also being published on Tumblr (account is also Impracticaldemon).