Work Text:
Gray was standing with one hand in his pocket, looking around the room as Team Natsu and Team B all eagerly stared at him. He'd watched everyone else, genuinely happy for each of them as their wishes were granted, not impatient for his own turn like Natsu had been just minutes before, which is why he was the last one to be called forward.
Elefseria regarded him with a pleased smile.
"Now," he said. "What is it that you wish for, Gray?"
And Gray responded shyly with, "I don't need my wish."
Everyone's jaws dropped at the same time.
"What?" Lucy said harshly.
"I'm good, really," Gray shrugged awkwardly under the attention. "Keep it, or… give it to someone else. I don't need it."
Then everyone started talking at once.
"Gray, you worked so hard for this! You've earned it," Wendy was staring up at him with her eyes wide and disbelieving.
"You completed the Quest!" Natsu announced, as though this was information Gray might have forgotten and thumped him on the temple.
"I know I completed the quest, idiot. "
"Gray." Erza's voice cut through the noise and everyone went quiet. She was looking at him with an expression that was equal parts fond and deeply exasperated by his statement. "You just spent a year on the most difficult quest in the history of Earthland and you are standing in front of a dragon who is offering you anything your heart desires and your response is no?"
"Yeah," Gray said with a slow nod. "Pretty much."
"But why?" Wendy pressed on, baffled.
Gray opened his mouth.
"And don't say you don't want anything," Lucy said quickly, pointing at him, Gray closed his mouth. "Because nobody does a quest like this for nothing. You must have wanted something when you started it. What was it?"
"If you know what you want," Erza said, in a somewhat softer voice, "you could simply ask for it here and now. You have earned it."
"I'll get it myself," Gray said quieter now. "Later."
"...You'll get it yourself," Lucy repeated slowly.
"Yeah," Gray confirmed. "I was planning on later tonight at the inn but —"
"You will go and retrieve your heart's desire, the one thing you could wish for right now," Erza said and took a deep breath to find her patience, "manually."
"That's the plan, yeah."
"That has to be the stupidest thing you've ever said," Natsu said bluntly, staring at him with a screwed up face.
"Gray," Lucy said, stepping forward. "If you already know what your heart's desire is, and you're saying you'll get it yourself, then what is it?" She tilted her head, curiously and he could feel all the eyes in the room silently judging him for his decision.
"Look I really don't want to get into it right now," he looked away from everyone. "Just… I'll do it later tonight, okay?"
"But that sucks!" Natsu whined.
"You got to know ours!" Lucy added and looked to the other team near them. "Everyone got to hear ours, it's not like it's embarrassing. We're all friends, whatever it is we won't judge you."
"No, it's not embarrassing but it is something private," he glared at her then. "Just drop it."
"If you want to receive your wish in private we can go to a different room," Elefseria offered and gestured to one of the doors in the Magia Dragon guildhall.
"We can all leave," Mirajane added with a kind smile.
"No, I just," he sighed and put a hand on his forehead. "I have my own plan I want to do, so can you all stop with the —"
"Do your damn plan now then!" Gajeel ground out. "This back and forth is boring, just say what you want."
"Gajeel," Juvia rolled her eyes and she looked at Gray with her usual smile ofr him. "Leave him alone, we can all just stand outside and he can ask for it then."
"No, you can't do that," Gray said hurriedly, she couldn't leave if he had to do this now.
"What, so you want us all to be in here but you don't want us to hear you ask for it?" Laxus crossed his arms as he looked between the groups. "Am I getting that right?"
"No, it's not all of you I need for... I need to — My heart's desire isn't something I can really…" he tried again. "It's not something a wish like this can give me. Well, maybe it can but it wouldn't be the right way to get it technically."
"Well, what is it?" Erza asked softly, looking at him expectantly to help him stop rambling.
He paused deciding not to chicken out before finally, finally saying it in a vicinity where she could hear it this time. Screw the fact that he was about to do it in front of all his friends instead of in a romantically decorated room in the inn they would stay in that night. Now was the time to tell her, he could set up something private and romantic later for her.
"Well, it's…" He swallowed harshly, his heart suddenly racing.
Elefseria stepped forward again, "there's no need to hide what you want in front of your family and friends." He chuckled low and warm as he spoke, "what is it your heart desires most?"
Gray took a breath and moved his eyes from Elefseria and looked back to where Juvia was standing.
Nobody moved an inch as they each realized what was finally about to happen.
"I want Juvia to be by my side," he said after a long silence, "and I want to deserve having her there. That's the part I could never get past. Because she's given me everything I could ever..." he stopped. His jaw tightened briefly at the sweet blush on her cheeks matched with wide eyes as she stared back at him, he decided it was time to tell her directly, "I couldn't stand the idea of asking you to settle for someone who hadn't done anything to actually earn your love."
He wasn't looking away from her. His was bright red but his voice was steady and he did his best to keep it that way.
"So I thought, if I could do this, if I could actually finish something that nobody's managed to in a hundred years, then maybe I'd be someone worth standing next to." He licked his lips, feeling his confidence rising as he told her everything he had been keeping in for so long. "I needed to be able to look you in the eye and promise you that whatever comes, whatever tries to hurt you, whatever gets in our way, that I can handle it. And I do, I promise you that you never have to be afraid of anything as long as I'm there with you." His voice dropped slightly.
Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Even Natsu was perfectly still as they all stared at him like he had grown a second head.
Gray exhaled slowly, and when he continued his voice was quieter, "every dark night out there, every time it got scary, every moment I wasn't sure I would make it back alive… all I saw was you in my mind. It was you I needed to get back home to and I kept thinking about that moment, of finally getting to see you again and standing in front of you as someone who'd actually done something with himself."
He looked at her. Really looked at her before deciding, "I should have said it a long time ago but I'm saying it now. I went on the hundred years quest, the hardest thing I could find and I pushed myself until I was someone you could be proud of," the corners of his mouth curved up, "because I am so in love with you, and I wanted you to think I was cool."
He let that land and held her gaze for a moment.
"So I don't need the reward," he was still looking at Juvia but half-aiming his words towards everyone. "My wish is for Juvia to stay by my side," he said earnestly. "Forever, hopefully." She still hadn't moved a muscle. "So I suppose the only thing now is, will you grant me my wish, Juvia?"
The silence that followed was terrifying for Gray. None of his friends, nor Juvia spoke for several long seconds as they all stared at him in shock.
Then Juvia's composure came apart entirely.
She crossed the distance between them at speed and Gray caught her, wrapping his arms around her as tight as her could and let out a sigh of relief as they stumbled back a few steps at the impact of the collision. He knew she wouldn't say no to him, but still, he had kept her waiting this long her couldn't blame her if she had changed her mind or had doubts.
She had her face pressed into his shoulder and she was laughing and crying simultaneously in a way that was so undignified and she was probably getting tears and snot all over him, but he could not have cared less about that.
Gray exhaled, long and slow, and his arms tightened around her and he pulled her closer by the back of her head.
She moved back just far enough to look at him, and kept her arms tight around his neck.
"Gray-sama," she said, shaking her head slowly, her hands coming up to cup his cheeks, "you are so silly."
Gray blinked. "...Silly?"
"Incredibly silly." She held his face in both hands and looked at him with fond exasperation. "All of that. All of this, " her voice caught slightly and she pressed through it with a watery laugh, "because you wanted Juvia to think you were cool?"
"That was only one part of it but — "
"Juvia already thinks you're cool," she cut him off, and her voice was warm and completely sincere. "You were already everything to Juvia. Do you know when Juvia decided you the most wonderful person she had ever met?"
He said nothing.
"When you saved her from the rain," she said softly. "The clouds went away after we fought and Juvia thought oh, this is her person. That was it." She searched his face. "You didn't need to prove anything. You have been enough, more than enough, since that very first day we met."
"You could have told me that before I did all of this," he said sarcastically, his voice rough as he tried to lighten the mood a little.
"Juvia did," she said, laughing through her tears. "Many, many times. You were very stubborn about actually hearing it."
He let out a small half-laugh and tucked a stray hair behind her ear.
Juvia beamed at him, and he thought his heart would stop at the sight. That smile that had always made him feel like he'd won the jackpot in life, and maybe he did because she was finally in his arms for good.
"Juvia loves you too," she said, plain and steady. "She has loved you for a very long time. You were wonderful back then," Her thumbs brushed his cheeks gently. "And you are even more wonderful now, but not just because of the quest." She held his gaze. "Because you came home."
The corner of his mouth curved into his usual smirk. "Oh yeah?"
Juvia recognized the tone immediately. Her eyes narrowed, "...Yes? What are you thinking about now?"
"Just..." He tilted his head, perfectly casual, his hands warm at her waist still. "Last time I did something brave for you, there was a kiss involved and I was wondering if —"
"We are standing in front of everyone!" She hissed and looked around consciously.
"You tell me you love me in front of them all the time, and I just did it now too," he pointed out reasonably, "so I feel like we're past the threshold of embarrassment."
"That is completely different!"
"Is it though?"
"YES!"
"Do we have to be on a battlefield for it to happen or something?" He teased as she leaned back and groaned in complaint. "Cause I'll find something to fight if I need to to get another one from you."
"Gray-sama," Juvia said, somewhere between laughing and mortified. He grabbed the fabric on the waist of her dress to pull her in to him and he kissed her, cutting off whatever it was she was about to say next.
The cheer from the group was immediate, yelling 'finally!' and 'I knew it!'
But he took no notice to their friends, his whole world was solely focused that Juvia's soft lips were moving slowly against his in a real kiss and not just a desperate attempt at CPR mid-fight.
When they pulled back, Gray was smiling brightly down at her. "So that's a no, then," he said. "Not just on the battlefield?"
"Juvia is going to push you off the roof of this guild hall," she informed him, but ran her fingers through her hair as she leaned into him again.
"So worth it."