Reaching Out
Pairing: Gruvia (Fairy Tail)
Prompt: Love at First Sight (from my feb prompt list)
Note: hello divas, it was my birthday a few days ago, lol. And while I'm still working through those damn feb prompts (why did I think that was a good idea? who knows) I wanted to post this! One of my fav ships of all time. Now this fic is much softer and hopefully y'all like it. I feel like its not like traditional fan fic writing..idk, but I like it so im gonna post it lol. I'll stop typing but enjoy this cause I had fun writing it!! Much love to all love. Its short n sweet.
The idea of love was almost a foreign concept to him. While he knew the laws of attractions, he didn’t believe his heart could do anything more than pump blood through his body. Magic could flow through his veins, but emotions became stunted when his heart was involved.
A deep desire, one he would never speak out loud, would be to get rid of the ice shell around his own heart. To know that maybe one day, someone could find peace within him. It was a dream that he believed half-heartedly, like the fairy tales his mother used to read him.
Maybe once, moons ago, he did believe in all that. Sometimes those beliefs get to be held longer by others, but for him, many things left him at a young age. It was easier to swallow the pill that love just wasn’t in the cards for him. Even as a wizard, there were some things that he couldn’t fathom.
Love. It was out of reach. Grasping with the tips of his fingers, it always slipped through and suddenly, he couldn’t remember the last time he tried to reach out. There was no point. Only the fear that he would wind up left alone once again. It was safer this way. One more crack in the ice and he was terrified that he would drown.
He wished he could tell his past self how wrong he would be. He wished he could tell himself how he learned how to breathe again. How the idea of something more kept him haunted in a way that he couldn’t comprehend. How a rooftop would become his holy land.
The universe didn’t allow for confusion as she approached him. It was like there was a golden string attached to him and somehow, she had always been connected. Tugging over and over, he felt something shift within him.
He knew himself better than anyone, and yet, this feeling…
Blue eyes met his dark ones and the world felt lighter. His heart was thumping to a melody he had never heard. A symphony he started to crave. A song he would have on repeat for the rest of his life.
She was an enigma. He never was the brightest but he wanted to study her. To know why he felt this way. What could she possibly have that he needed?
During their first meeting, a battle he was certain he might lose, there was something new that happened and it caused a shift. Another crack in his ice and yet, somehow he wasn’t falling. There was no darkness to consume him but something utterly wonderful.
The flushing of her cheeks when he spoke had sent his mind into chaos. She enticed him and he wanted more. In the deepest parts of his soul, parts that he didn't even allow himself to travel to, something erupted. A flicker of a flame that came from embers that were unsuspecting.
His throat was dry when she approached. A demeanor of coldness that rivaled his own. Her dark blue eyes captured him and threatened to hold his gaze until she said so. Power oozed from her and something made his spine straighten out.
For a moment, a belief he had doubts about, started to form. He wanted to push the thought away. He had been hurt, so accustomed to loss, that the idea of another leaving had overshadowed a good memory that could form. It was a momentary belief. Nothing more. Yet for the man who let life slip through his fingers time and time again, he made no hesitation reaching out to her.
He had never moved faster. His legs pushing him and nearly sending him over the edge. His hand clutched around hers in a desperate attempt to save her. While to the outside world, he was clearly saving her, he didn’t know that she would salvage a broken heart. How reaching out to her would be the very thing to bring him back to life.
Her eyes opened to the sky. An unfathomable sight bestowed upon her and her cheeks flushed from the light. Her pupils dilated like never before. Lips parted and a gasp escaped as if it had been locked inside of her for a thousand years. She couldn't take her eyes away from the heaven above.
Little did she know, his eyes couldn't leave her. He didn't know what it meant at that moment. What the sky and darkness had done to torment the woman before him. She was a stranger. Someone he didn't know, someone he shouldn't care to know. An enemy to his guild, yet…
A sky that he had seen a thousand times was nothing to be excited about. It was a part of life. Maybe a sunset could capture his attention, but bright blue? No. However, she looked at it as if a miracle had been performed. As if she had been in a desperate plea to witness a cloudless day.
He could see it all on her face. The smallest gleam in her eye formed and he saw it perfectly. The first spark of a fire coming from embers that had died years before. He knew it all too well. He should have extinguished them. Let himself not be drawn to a promise of something more. But he couldn’t.
He laid on the rooftop watching her amusement to the sky before them. His frown deep and face unsettling. How much pain was she caring? How much suffering did she face to believe that this was a marvel of the world?
Perhaps he was selfish. To take something like the sky granted. Never again would that happen. For the first time, he didn’t think about the pain or the suffering. He didn’t think about how a dark ending could be in the future.
But before the sky showed, his hand had been wrapped with hers. A slip from a puddle and she went to fall off. Her body followed gravity and he saw the painful look on her face. She was going to allow it.
She was willing to die. Willing to let it all go. Like a thread slipping out of its seam, once it starts, you can't stop it.
Maybe that's why he reached out. Because he knew what it was like to be lost in a maze you didn't know you were in. Constantly running from agony and hoping you don't fall further down. There's a bottom that few hit and can't climb out of. He had saw someone who was just as broken.
Perhaps their shattered pieces could mend the others.
The tug of her hand on his brought him into a reality he wasn't sure was real. Her eyes were bright and desperate. Her lips parted with words she couldn't find and just two eyes locked in each other.
She had thought she was a goner.
He thought she was beautiful.
She had believed that the sky was bright but to him, she blinded him.
His own words were lost as he pulled her to safety. He didn't say it then but he didn't want to let her hand go. A warmth that he never experienced flooded his palm. He had been met with fire before but this heat was burning him in a glorious way.
So he stayed on that rooftop much longer than he should have. He took her in. The way her cheeks lifted with her smile and creased her eyes. The way her breath staggered as she kept looking up desperate to memorize the sky in case it left again.
The fear was mutual. He took in the way her hair was curled tightly but slowly was losing its sharpness. Her hat, her doll, her dress, it was all being committed to memory in case they never saw each other again.
Desperate to make sure that this feeling he had was real, he reached out and drew her eyes away from the sky. It felt selfish to do so. The look on her face toward the sky was tender and soft, but the expression didn’t change when she looked at him.
And maybe in a silly way, he thought that fairy tales could be real. That the books that once were read by his mother, were playing out in front of him. That maybe deep down, peace could be found between them. Love at first sight may not be the correct words for him, but there was something new springing to existence when he looked at her.
There was nothing he wanted more than to hold onto this feeling. So when she came through the guild doors with a mark stamped to her thigh, the cigarettes didn’t have the same kick they did anymore. A new fix was found.
He thought that maybe the nights they shared where they slipped away to the forest was enough to cure any injury he faced. Slowly, the disbelief and the cards were showing a new hand and he was willing to bet it all if it meant that he got to hold her close.
For a man who didn’t pay attention to most, he knew what her favorite flower was. How she liked a darker blue compared to bright. How she liked to keep her hair down and secretly loved the rain.
He knew every part of her in a way he didn’t know himself. He knew the touch of her hand on his arm when she laughed. The brush of their fingertips when they walked through town. The source of her smile on a boring day. He knew what songs she hummed in the shower and the imprint of her lips against his.
So for the years that his heart was frozen and trapped, he made up for it by wrapping his arms around her waist and holding her close. For life could slip by all it wanted to, but he would hold onto her forever.
Somehow, his favorite story became theirs. There was something poetic about his happiness being tied to hers. How a woman who could control the rain was also outshining the sun. He admired how a woman who had been feared for so long could turn out to be the kindest person he had ever met.
So maybe Gray didn’t believe in love at first sight, but he believed in Juvia. She was like a new religion that he would dedicate his life to. He would give anything to make sure that the sky was clear and while many thought that he gave her the sky, she had given him the universe.
He had vowed to become the man she deserved. Become the person where the pain doesn’t define him and his strength wasn’t just from his magic. He found himself one day walking up to her just like he always did.
It was quiet at the guild and they were in the garden. She was talking about flowers, something casual. He had felt it. That melody in his heart, just like he did when they first met. The sun was engulfing her in a halo of light and while she talked, she looked perfect.
Slowly, he took her hand. A red flushed her face as his other hand caressed her cheek.
“Gray?” She whispered with eyes wide as the moon.
All he did was smile before he kissed her. It was slow and careful as if he had been thinking about it for months on end. In his dreams, she was always found to the point that the nights would become restless. But right now? The dreams had faded away as he took in the real thing. He liked how he could feel her hand pressed against his chest and her eyelashes against his.
He pulled away and his arm went around her on the back of the bench they were sitting on. Her face bright red as her voice started to go into a ramble.
A smile tugged at his lips. “Juvia?”
Her voice faltered. “Yes?”
Her own smile took over. She scooted closer to him. “You make Juvia happy too.”
As the months of them together turned to years, the foreign concept of love became his expertise. She became the stars on his map. The sole reason for him to get up. In every aspect of his life, she was there. No matter where they were, he would always reach out to her.
I hope that you enjoyed! Comments and likes/reblogs appreciated!
