Tempest. // gruvia au

4

"For what?", Gray asked after a short silence. He didn't quite whisper but the black haired male lowered his voice to match hers.

Juvia blinked a few times though her eyes were still fixated on the fire.

"For everything. For everything that Juvia did to upset her darling", she spoke, sadness being present in her
voice.

Finally, she faced him, her eyes filled with disappointment ­probably in herself.

Gray frowned and tilted his head, opening his mouth again: "Why would you think I'm upset?"

Juvia

Juvia bit the soft tissue on the inside of her cheek as she thought.

Grimacing in pain at the compulsive action, her tongue felt just how raw the inside of her cheek had gotten from biting.

People seemed to have a tendency of biting themselves internally until they bleed only when they don't know how to handle what's presented on the outside.

When they don't want to show their dripping colours of anxiety, melancholy, maybe disgust.

"Juvia knows you're upset, because you're quiet. You've been talking, but you've been talking just to breathe. You're biting back your real words."

As she spoke, her teeth lifted off the spot she had been gnawing on in her cheek.

The room was so deadly silent after that, Juvia could hear the faint buzzing noise of electrical charges of nerves in her ears.

I went too far. One's mind is a place no one should trespass on, and I've stepped the boundaries. I'm sorry, darling.

Darling, forgive me?

In the space this silence is giving you, what are you thinking, Gray?

When Gray's voice broke the space between them, Juvia twitched her elbow in surprise. Although, his voice was wasn't loud or intrusive, something that should cause you to be startled at all, it was low and shaky, vulnerable, like a child's.

Gray's voice squeaked out, and surely, the words must be a wary surrender of walls that had been built up for a long time.

The sounds finally strung into words, strung into a sentence in Juvia's ears:

"Juvia? Can you read minds?"

Juvia burst out into a joyous fit of laughing, pangs jabbing into her ribcage from the pressure from each chuckle. That was why he acted so somber? The intensity had been so heavy in the room. Not to mention the serious voice he said it in!

"Juvia?" Gray leaned over, placing his elbows on his knees, furrowing his eyebrows from the corner of Juvia's vision. Although, her vision was starting to get foggy from the tears beginning to pool in her crystal eyes. "I'm not getting why this is so funny. Can you help me out?"

Juvia's laughter which had calmed down began to bubble again, and she flopped sideways on the empty couch in her fits of giggles. She was laughing so hard, sound didn't even escape her lungs and her eyes began watering from the pain. Gray would really think she was off her rocker now.