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The first time it happened, Gray could admit he’d gotten a little freaked out. He’d tried not to show it, hadn’t wanted to make Jellal feel any worse, but it had scared him. After all, while most would probably describe Jellal as a quiet person, Gray knew that that… wasn’t really the case. His boyfriend talked all the time, and sure, he didn’t get as loud as most people that Gray knew, but that didn’t mean he was quiet. Jellal just preferred not being the center of attention, not drawing unnecessary attention to himself, and keeping his voice low and soft was one of the ways that he did that, opting to just whisper his thoughts and opinions into Gray’s ear rather than actually chiming into whatever conversation was going on around them.
As such, Gray had noticed almost immediately when Jellal just… stopped talking.
“Hey…” Gray turned to him, taking his hand and giving it a light squeeze. “Are you doing alright? You’re pretty quiet tonight.”
Jellal didn’t even look at him, just kept staring straight ahead, his eyes locked onto nothing but the guildhall floor.
Gray tuned out whatever tirade Natsu was going on, and waved Cana off when she tried to hand him another drink. “Hey, Jellal. Is everything okay?” He knew his boyfriend had been a little nervous about the party tonight, his anxious ticks had gotten progressively worse as the day had gone on, but he’d been adamant that he was okay to come, that he would be fine. It was the first real event Jellal was able to come to after he’d gotten pardoned, so Gray supposed he could understand the nerves, even if he personally thought literally everything else Jellal had ever done was more anxiety inducing, he wasn’t going to judge him for getting nervous to come to a standard Fairy Tail party.
But now he was really starting to worry.
“Hey.” As gentle as possible, Gray shook his shoulder when Jellal still didn’t offer a real response. “Please, talk to me, look at me.”
Ever so briefly, Jellal’s eyes flashed over to him, before they were glued back to the floor.
“Gray? Jellal? Having a good time?” Erza asked as she stepped over, both hands balancing impressive plates of food, and Gray hoped at least one of them was for Mira and that the armor mage didn’t intend to eat them both herself.
When Jellal didn’t even acknowledge Erza, Gray finally decided that yes, something was wrong, and started to get concerned. “Yeah, everything’s great, Erza.” She’d worked hard organizing repairs on the guildhall, and had been ecstatic for everyone to have a night of fun and relaxation for the first time in a while. He wasn’t going to worry her if it wasn’t necessary. “We’re just gonna go get some air.”
She frowned, her eyes beginning to narrow, but didn’t push any further. “Okay.” She stepped out of the way. “Let me know if you need anything though? I want to make sure you feel welcome, Jellal.”
At the sound of his name, Jellal at least looked at her, but still didn’t answer.
“Jellal?” Erza asked, leaning forward, her voice laced with concern.
“We’ll be right back,” Gray hurried to assure her, getting up out of his seat and tugging Jellal with him. Thankfully, his boyfriend complied without any resistance at all, and tailed after Gray as he zigzagged through the lively crowd, finally squeezing his hand back.
Erza stared after them, but didn’t try to follow.
As soon as they made it outside, Gray nudged Jellal off to the corner of the guildhall’s porch. “Hey… Can you tell me what’s wrong now? Is it too much? We can go back to my place, if it is. I promise I won’t mind, and neither will Erza. We throw parties all the time.”
Still, Jellal merely stared at him.
“Come on, Jellal.” Gray took both his hands. “I’m starting to get really worried here. Are you okay? Should I get someone? Erza? Meredy?” Despite the fact that they’d been dating since just before Gray had gone undercover in Avatar, he still felt that both women knew Jellal infinitely better than he did. “Or do you need a healer? Wendy’s just inside, or we could go to Porlyusica, if you’d prefer that?”
Jellal shook his head.
Gray let out a small breath of relief. At least that was an answer, even if he still wasn’t talking.
“Do you want to leave?” he asked.
Though a bit more hesitant this time, Jellal shook his head again.
“Alright…” With little else to do, Gray sat down on the porch, with Jellal following his lead. Obviously his boyfriend wasn’t injured, or in any kind of danger, so while this was concerning, Gray was willing to wait it out, rather than doing the wrong thing and making the sudden and absolute silence any worse.
Jellal hunched over, and began to nibble and chew at his nails. Normally Gray chided him for the habit, as often he wouldn’t stop until he was literally bleeding from the nail bed, but seeing as something was clearly wrong, he decided to leave him be for the moment.
Gray wasn’t sure how long they sat there, at least a good twenty minutes, before Jellal finally whispered, “Sorry…,” his voice so soft that Gray almost thought he’d imagined the word.
“You don’t need to apologize,” Gray said, shaking his head. “But… are you… okay? I’ve never seen you just… get quiet like that before?”
It took him a few minutes to answer, and when he did, his voice was just as low as that first sorry, but Jellal said, “I’m fine, it just… it happens sometimes, and I… I just can’t talk. Meredy… Meredy says it’s ‘cause my head’s all fucked up.”
Gray frowned, doubting that had been the way Meredy had actually phrased it, but he got the message all the same. “What happened? Was it too much? The party?”
“I… I guess…” Jellal ducked his head, clearly embarrassed by the situation. “I—I noticed it happening, but by the time I caught it, it was… I couldn’t warn you. Sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for, you can’t help it. I’m sorry I didn’t realize sooner so I could help. Does it happen very often?” Obviously Gray had never experienced it before, but it had to have happened enough times that Jellal had gone to Meredy about it, or Meredy had noticed.
“Not in a while…” he said, his voice picking up a little more volume, but not much. “I’d hoped I’d gotten over it…”
Gray wrapped his arm around the other man’s shoulders, letting Jellal decide if he wanted to elaborate anymore right now or not.
“I… Meredy says it’s a trauma response, something to do with PTSD when I was a kid… or something,” he said. “I remember it happening at the Tower of Heaven sometimes, before I… well, you know. I’d go hours, sometimes even days without talking. I wanted to, I wanted to so bad, but I just… couldn’t sometimes, you know?”
“No,” Gray answered honestly. He’d never had a problem with saying exactly what was on his mind. “But that would be hard. I’m sorry.”
Jellal shrugged. “Erza always helped me out when it happened, covered for me when the slavers would ask me questions or anything. She probably realized that was what was going on in there which is why she didn’t push too hard. I got lucky this one didn’t last too long.”
“Do they normally last a long time?” Not that Gray cared, per say. Or well… that wasn’t true. He cared very much, and didn’t want Jellal to go through that, he just wanted to be sure he could be prepared the next time something like this happened.
“I was mute almost the entire time I was in prison after the Nirvana,” he said, tilting his head away, desperately trying to avoid eye contact.
“Oh…” Yeah, that was really concerning, because that had been years.
“But that was the worst it’s ever been,” Jellal hurried to say, his voice slowly but surely getting back to its normal volume. “Other than that, never longer than a day or two, but usually a couple hours.”
“Oh, okay. That’s good.” And was much more manageable.
“It happens when I get really stressed, or anxious,” he said. “But it hadn’t happened in almost a year, so I was… I was just really hoping I’d finally gotten over it. But I guess—Something about tonight just—I think I was nervous about being around so many people, I’m just not used to it, outside of battle or a mission anyways. That’s always easier.”
Gray nearly snorted. Only Jellal would be more scared of a party than a life or death battle. But he wasn’t going to invalidate his boyfriend’s feelings and anxieties like that. “Well, I’m glad it was here that it happened so it was easy to get you away. And I’ll watch more carefully now, so I notice sooner, alright? Is there… anything in particular I should do when this happens?”
Jellal shrugged. “What you did tonight was fine. Sometimes I can communicate with gestures, sometimes I can’t, but getting me away from everything will probably help, whether I can tell you that’s what I want or not.”
“Alright, I’ll do that.” He leaned over, pressing a soft kiss to Jellal’s temple. “I just want you to feel relaxed and happy. We don’t have to do anything that makes you that anxious again.”
“It’s not—I don’t want to avoid everything like this, it’s just… hard.” He bit at his nails again, and Gray gently guided his hand away from his mouth. “I don’t want to be like this.”
“Hey… it’s okay,” Gray assured him. “You said it hadn’t happened in almost a year, and this one didn’t even last an hour. You’re getting better, and I can try and help you, too.”
“Thank you, Gray.”
“Anytime.” He got back to his feet. “Now come on. Let’s go back to my place. We’ll try the next party, okay? We can just have a quiet night in tonight.”
A small smile tugged at Jellal’s lips. “Okay.”