5: Serendipity

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✩°。⋆*❀✿❀✿゚.*・。゚

Lucy giggled as she stared at Gray's expression after letting him know that Juvia was on the water polo team.

"Yeah she's always been interested in anything relating to swimming."

"Didn't you say that she was flirting with you?" Natsu interrupted their talk, "It doesn't seem like she even remembered you."

Gray slightly blushed and turned to look away from Natsu and Lucy, "She was flirting! I was here yesterday and order a small ice tea, and she said that I was cool." Gray flipped his semi-short dark locks.

Natsu shook his head in pity, "No dude, I think she was just joking around. Get it? You're cool because you got a cold drink in this weather."

Gray's smile fell and was replaced by a frown, "So it was all a lie?" He turned next to Lucy and pretended to cry into her shoulder as he hugged her frail body, "Dammit! I'm ugly!"

Lucy giggled and patted his shoulder as she returned his hug, "No!" She lightly slapped his back, "Silly, no one is ugly."

His head shot up with glistening spark in his eyes as he regained his confidence, "So what you're saying is that I'm HOT?!"

Natsu's eyebrows furrowed at the duo and he mentally reminded himself to kill Gray later, "The door is over there Gray." He pointed at the exit.

Gray smirked and leaned across the table to be directly in front of Natsu's face, "Is someone jealous?" He whispered through his cupped hands.

Natsu let out a deep growl, took out his wallet, and smacked Gray across his forehead with it.

"DESTROY HIM LUCY! BEAT HIM UP! Did you see what he did?! He physically hurt me-,"

"Here you go!" Juvia smiled as she placed all of their orders on the table. Gray's thoughts began swarming in his head as he realized that she must've caught him acting weird. He slowly sat up straighter and sipped on his drink, giving off a serious aura to let her know he wasn't playing around. 

Juvia politely forced a smile on her quivering lips, and quickly left, no once ever having eye contact with Lucy.

"Psst," Natsu whispered towards Lucy making her look up, "Gray has a crush on that one water girl or whatever her name is."

"It's Juvia." Lucy corrected him.

"Yeah her." He continued to whisper, "Anyways just look at him! Look what he's turned into."

They both turned their heads in sync to face Gray who was having an inner conflict with himself.

"You are handsome Gray!" He kept repeating to himself as he sipped his coffee and stared at his nonexistent watch, "You can do it! Just ask. Just ask. Nothing's gonna go wrong."

Lucy nodded her head in agreement as she stared at Gray who remained in a trance. It brought back depressing memories of her high school self, back when she had the lowest self esteem and had to remind herself of her unique qualities in order to progress throughout the day. 

"Hey Gray," She called, Gray looked at her and did a 'what's up' gesture, "I think that it wouldn't hurt anyone if you went up to go ask her out or something. If you want, you can ask her to go to the bowling alley with us." Lucy smiled feeling good about herself for helping her new friend out.

"YOU KNOW WHAT LUCY?" Gray shouted as he slammed his fist on the table with a determined look in his eyes, "You're right!"

He marched over to the pastel yellow counter where Juvia was standing by and casually greeted her. "Hi. Do you need anything?" She instantly asked, following her job protocol. 

"Yeah actually. I was wondering if you wanted to hang out later at the bowling alley?"

Juvia placed her index finger on her chin as she looked up for a moment, trying to remember on whether she had any plans for later tonight. "Sure! I'd love to go! My shift ends in a couple minutes anyways. Just the two of us?"

"No we'll be with Lucy and Natsu. I heard you went to the same school as Lucy."

Juvia began biting on her nails and started contemplating if she should arrange for another time. She decided to try to dismiss the rumors about Lucy and agreed to tag along, though deep inside she knew she would regret it. "Yeah! But we didn't talk that much, we were just classmates."

xXx

"Watch me Lucy!" Natsu excitedly exclaimed as he grabbed a yellow bowling ball from the small stand, "I'm good at this! I was on varsity."

Lucy cheerfully clapped next to him as she watched him squat and pivot his leg behind. He shifted legs and quickly rolled the ball to the aimed pins. Unfortunately he slipped on his blue bowling shoes, which caused the heavy ball to roll on the bumpers.

"Well you tried!" Lucy laughed.

Gray shook his head as he stood. He and Juvia were on the next lane beside Natsu and Lucy because Juvia had requested it.

"You throw like a toddler!" Gray sneered as he proceeded to achieve a perfect strike.

"I was just messing with all of you!" Natsu yelled back. Natsu continued to try and knock the pins down, but it worked to no avail.

Each round made him become more embarrassed around Lucy. Despite having skinny, thin arms, she was able to knock most of the pins and had hit a few strikes along the way.

At one point, Juvia pulled Gray outside. Natsu told Lucy to continue playing as he quickly jogged over to the bathroom, not wanting to leave Lucy alone for too long.

He accidently took the wrong turn after he had finished, and was lead outside. There he spotted Gray and Juvia talking, and Juvia looked sick.

Thinking that Gray's horrible flirting skills were at fault, he sneakily approached them to try and help but stopped once Lucy's name was mentioned.

"Please just trust me in this Gray! Don't get too close to her."

"Why?" Gray asked, surprised to see this side of Juvia.

"Just ... I don't want to talk about it, but just trust me on this. Please?"

"But Lucy is my friend! She's Natsu's soon to be girlfriend! She's nice and caring, she helped me,-"

Juvia let out a deep loud sigh in defeat, "O-k. Be just be cautious around her,-"

Natsu took steps back and ran away back to Lucy. She was standing outside looking for him. He took quite a while, and Lucy assumed he must've gotten lost. 

"There you are!" Lucy yelled as she jumped to hug Natsu. Natsu caught her mid air and hugged her back with stronger force.

Their time spent together under the stars that surfaced from the ocean blue sky created a magical scene over them. Natsu knew that it was because of serendipity that he had found Lucy.

✩°。⋆*❀✿❀✿゚.*・。゚




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