A Horizontal Conundrum

by bellagill92

It started with a downpour and ended with a christening.

A/N: She lives! That's right, I am not dead in a ditch somewhere, only super busy and obsessed with writing super long fics instead of smaller ones that I could post more often.

Thanks you everyone for your well-wishes abut my Grandma - she's doing much better now.

I hope you all enjoy this fic... as always, it sounded a lot better in my head, but oh well...

Their move from separate into shared quarters started out mostly out of necessity.

Summer arrived two months into Erza Scarlet and Jellal Fernandes's unorthodox cohabitation agreement and brought anything but summery weather – overcast days abounded, there was no sign of heat, the wind just didn't seem to want to take a break… It all culminated on the ungodly mid-July day in which the mother of all summer rainstorms came down on Magnolia – which just so happened to be the first time it rained since they had moved into that particular house.

It was two in the morning when Jellal was awakened by the thunder outside. He might have just ignored it and gone back to sleep, were it not for the frantic movements on the room upstairs from his and then up and down the stairs – what was Erza doing at that hour? It was – he paused, checking the alarm clock – one in the morning!

The answer came as soon as he stepped out of the room and saw Erza rushing up the stairs with a couple of buckets her hands.

"What's going on?" he asked her blearily.

"The roof is leaking and it is raining in my room! Get some pots from the kitchen. Anything that can contain water in it!" she ordered, like a general commanding her troops.

And so, gather pots he did.

That was only the beginning of a very long night strategically placing containers and mopping up rain water from the floors (while praying that the wood wouldn't rot) until Jellal came up with the ingenious idea of using what little Ice-Magic he could muster to seal up the cracks on the roof and hoping it would hold at least until they were able to have someone look into it.

"Mavis," was all he could say once they were done. Well, mostly done – the room was still a complete mess with most of the furniture having been moved out of the way. "Wasn't the roof fixed before we moved in?"

Erza nodded. "Natsu and Gray were in charge of that," she said. Back when they had decided to move into that house, their teams had offered to lend a hand with making it habitable for them. Their help had been invaluable at the time and quite handy, given their experience with rebuilding from all the times their guild building had been turned into a pile of rubble.

"Ah, that explains it, then…" Jellal mumbled, causing the redhead to raise an eyebrow. "They got into a fight towards the end, remember? Knocked each other out and everything. I guess they just forgot to finish what they were doing, what with those concussions they gave themselves and everything."

Erza groaned. "Idiots."

"Well, they helped for free and I'd say they did a fairly good job at that, given that it isn't raining anywhere else in the house," he pointed out.

The redhead gave him a look and sighed. Jellal Fernandes: always positive about everything but himself. "So, I gather that now that the leak is contained, we should put the things that we can't just wipe up to dry," she declared.

Jellal nodded. "Good thing you keep most of your clothes in your requip space, or else we would have a lot of laundry to do."

"The mattress is waterlogged, though," Erza pointed out, approaching the bed and pulling on the soaked sheets resting over it. "The biggest leak was right above where the bed used to be." She scratched her chin, looking at it thoughtfully. "We should put it up against the wall. I think it may dry faster that way."

He nodded, moving to the other side of the bed to help her lifting the water-heavy mattress from the bed. "You do realize that it will never dry quickly enough for you to sleep on it tonight… maybe even a few days," he stated.

She nodded. "I am aware. I suppose today will be the day when I finally test how comfortable the couch is."

"What? No. You take the bed downstairs – I'll take the couch," he was quick to offer.

She frowned. "Do not be silly, Jellal. That bed is yours."

"Actually, it's yours." As were 99% of the things in that house.

The redhead glared. "It may have been, but since I gave it to you, it's most definitely yours now!" she retorted, almost aggressively. "I'm staying on the couch."

"Erza, you just returned from a week-long job hours ago. You need rest and you won't be getting it if you sleep on that couch."

"Neither will you. You're even taller than I am! Your feet will hang off the end. You are not taking the couch."

"Well, neither are you."

For about ten seconds, they only stared each other down, daring one another to give in. It didn't work for either of them.

"Sounds like we are at an impasse," Erza pointed out.

"Agreed," he said. "What do we do, then?"

"I don't know. There is only one bed but two of us. Unless we produce an extra one out of thin air, the only solution would be us sh…" She trailed off, her face reddening considerably.

Jellal raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she mumbled, making a point of not meeting his eyes.

"It doesn't seem like nothing," he pointed out.

She only grew redder. "It just occurred to me…" she mumbled.

"What did?"

"That…" she stopped, hesitating with her words. "Never mind."

He sighed. "Erza, just say it. Whatever it is, I'm sure it's fine," he reassured her.

She finally willed herself to eye him wearily. "I… I meant to say… it crossed my mind for a moment that, if it came to that, it wouldn't be the first time we slept together… in the most platonic sense of the word, of course!" she was quick to add, almost hysterically.

He blinked. "Oh," he mumbled, his face reddening as well.

She flushed even redder. "Just forget that I said anything."

"No, no," he quickly said. "I mean, if you're okay with that…" Why did he feel like he might just be making things very difficult for himself? They were dating, sure, but they still hadn't reached-bed-sharing levels of said dating!

She gave him a tentative look. "I only meant that the bed is wide enough for both of us to occupy… each would take their side… we could even use spare blankets and pillows to create a barrier in the middle… it would only have to be uncomfortable if we made it so," she argued.

"I see," was his vague response.

"So, then… what are your thoughts on the matter?"

By the forced-casual tone she tried to use, one might think that she was asking his opinion about decoration options or something equally trivial when it was anything but. So what to answer… well, he didn't want Erza stuck on the sofa and she seemed unwilling to let him move there himself so, really, his options were quite limited at the moment. "Well… I think we've got a plan."

It started, predictably, very awkwardly with a lot a blushing as they went to collect all the spare pillows in the house from the linen closet and realized that they didn't have more than six total, which included the ones that were meant to go under their heads, which didn't make for a very effective pillow barrier between them.

"Ah, I'm s-sure we can make it work," Jellal said, trying to sound as positive as possible even though his heart was drumming in his chest because, good God, he was about to share a bed with Erza Scarlet, purposely, for the first time in decades.

"We can," she agreed, even though she had her doubts.

"The barrier is only for… hmm, signage purposes, really," he argued. "Just so each of us knows where their side ends… speaking of which, which side do you want?"

She tried to question which one he usually took but he reassured her that either was fine and she honestly couldn't tell which one he had been sleeping on because it turned out that he had tidied up the whole room, including changing the sheets, in the ten minutes that she had spent in the bathroom mostly hyperventilating at their impending bad-sharing (never mind that the man was actually her boyfriend and they ended up sleeping in the vicinity of each other at least twice a week, even if that usually happened with her drooling on his shoulder after a few hours of watching lacrima-vision with him on the couch or in a more camping-related context when they went on a job together). She ended up taking the side he usually slept on and didn't even realize it – the only thing she knew was then, even on clean sheets, his smell seemed to have delightfully founds its way into the bed itself. It was heaven.

They lay back-to-back on either side of the poorly-constructed blanket wall in an attempt to reduce awkwardness and, although Jellal quickly realized that he couldn't just forget that Erza was right there within hand's reach, laying under the same layers of sheets and blankets as he was, after the first minutes of mortification had passed, he managed to almost convince himself that no, that wasn't that much worse than when they sleept by each other's sides while camping out during jobs, even if that usually involved separate sleeping bags.

Almost.

Because after forty-five minutes of uneasy sleep, he was startled to find something extremely out of place rolling on top of him. Something warm, soft and, he came to notice when he opened his eyes, with quite a lot of red hair.

And so it began… the moment that he would later describe as the 'epic cuddle freak-out' in which he spent several minutes panicking because the object of every single one of his lustful fantasies was right on top of him and that was just… bad. Bad because…well, it was just bad, even if he couldn't think of a reason to justify that with at that moment in specific.

How wasn't sure how much time passed until he finally managed to get out of freak-out mode and produce a rational thought but he had a feeling that it had been quite a while because… well, Erza Scarlet was right on top of him in all her sleeping glory and that was a lot to take in. Once he did gather his thoughts, he finally managed to set a goal in his mind: moving her back into her side of the bed.

Easier said than done.

Carefully as he could, he tried to nudge her away at first… and then, when that didn't work, he tried to pry her arm from over himself. It didn't move an inch. In fact it didn't move a millimeter. In hindsight, he couldn't really claim the right to be surprised by that – not just because he was being extra-gentle not to wake her but also because, after all, that was Erza Scarlet glued to him like a barnacle and Erza Scarlet was widely known for not budging in any situation unless she wanted to… which apparently she didn't at the moment.

What to do, then… he was fairly certain that if she were awake, she would be quick to return to her allocated half of the bed. But then again, for that to be the case, he would have to, well, wake her up and that seemed neither easy (she had, after all, not even stirred during all his attempted maneuvering) nor desirable because she looked just so… content and relaxed in a way that he couldn't say he had seen her before while awake, so how could he just up and disturb that?

He spent a few more minutes analyzing the situation before reaching quite a surprising conclusion: that now that he was over the initial shock, having Erza so close in her sleep actually didn't bother him that much.

Sure, he felt a bit guilty because that amount of closeness with him awake and her not felt almost illicit but… well, it wasn't like he had been the one starting it. But the thing was, his main reason to feel so panicked about having Erza all over him just didn't seem to apply. What was that reason, one might ask? Well, that would be his less… refined feelings for the redhead in question.

Jellal Fernandes was not proud to admit that his girlfriend's body did things to his mind. Bad things. He went to great lengths to keep those things as locked in as humanely possible because Erza was a pure beam of light in his life that did not deserve to be polluted by the perversion in his mind but obviously a man had his limits. And up until that night, he would have assumed that waking up to find Erza sprawled all over him would very much cross those limits.

Thankfully, like in most things, he just did not give himself enough credit.

Sure, she looked beautiful as ever, even with pillow creases marked on her face and her hair a mess, and her curves were still the same, if not particularly obvious while pressed against his side. But none of that really counted because the more he looked at her peaceful sleeping face, the more he could see the vulnerability that she hardly ever showed during the day when she was a fierce peon of justice – vulnerability he recognized from so long ago, back when they were only children living in a cold, scary place. And although that didn't make his feelings for her waver for a second, it did somewhat shift them back to the format they had held back then, which was a fierce and almost pure need to protect her, even from the world itself.

So, he did just that.

Of course, she was in no immediate danger, so his protection came in the form of comfort through tucking the sheets closer around her and returning her hold as best as he could. Sleep came easily to him once he felt like the job was done.

And then morning came with a startled yelp.

He barely had a chance to blink himself awake before he found the mortified redhead rushing out of the room in a stream of excuses. It would take him several minutes of recovering brain power to conclude that it must have been the embarrassment of the situation that had sent her running. And all of a sudden, he felt like running as well because, sweet Mavis, he had slept cuddling with Erza Scarlet without her permission and although doing so had made a lot of sense in his mind at the time, now that she'd sped away in mortification, it occurred to him that doing so might have been a bit presumptuous.

She avoided him for most of the morning and seemed embarrassed every time they crossed paths in the afternoon while their roof was being fixed even though he did his best not to act even a little out of the ordinary.

At night her mattress still hadn't dried, so they found themselves once again having to share a bed. It didn't escape him that, from one day to the other, their stock of spare pillows seemed to have quadrupled in size and with the extra pillows at hand, Erza was able to build a foot-high wall between them, running the bed from top to bottom. She, however, forgot to take one thing into account: her own flare for destruction. So, when he woke up in the middle of the night to find the remainders of her wall spread on the floor next to his side of the bed and somebody spooning him from behind, Jellal wasn't all that surprised. For the sake of sparing them more embarrassment, though, he did try to get her off a bit harder that day.

"Erza," he called in a mere whisper. When she didn't respond, he shook her a little… and then a lot, even if disturbing her content sleep physically hurt. "Erza, you need to let go."

He must have said that half a dozen times before she responded.

"Nooo," came her voice, sounding both muffled and childish against his chest. "Mine… get'yo own…"

He raised an eyebrow. Was she still asleep. "Erza…"

"Jelah…" she mumbled, the word suspiciously like his name. "Soft…"

And then, she went quiet again, snoring softly.

He huffed, recognizing defeat for what it was. "You are going to be the death of me."

Sleep led into yet another awkward morning – she woke up before him that day and he didn't see her until he headed to the kitchen and found her there already sipping on a cup of tea. She averted his eyes all through breakfast and disappeared for most of the day.

Erza Scarlet was nothing if not persistent, he soon concluded. The following night, there were even more pillows, that time secured to each other and the bedframe with rope and that once Jellal actually thought she had finally gotten it.

He was wrong. The only thing she achieved was to scare the daylights out of him when the piece of wood on the headboard of the bed that she had tied the rope to broke off and went flying along with the pillow wall when she crashed into it one time too many.

Mavis, just how inhumanely strong was the woman?!

He finally thought to address the matter the following morning when he found Erza inspecting the damage to the bedframe after returning to the room from a shower and considered that her next attempt at raising a barrier and its impending destruction might actually result in injury.

"Maybe we should put those pillows away," he suggested, trying to sound as casual as humanely

She turned around, blushing as she looked at him, then at the discarded pillows on the floor and then back at him again. "Did you…?" she started before trailing off.

He blinked. "Did I what?"

She became even redder. "Did you notice?"

Notice? "Notice what?" he asked, utterly clueless.

"What happens… at night… that does this… to the pillows…" she provided, looking embarrassed enough to hide herself in the deepest hole she could find.

Oh, Jellal thought. That was what she meant.

He didn't even have to confirm it for her see it all over her face. "You did notice," she remarked, looking mildly horrified.

"Well… it was hard not to," he mumbled.

The sound she made was actually painful – the peak of mortification, one might call it. "And… and you still…" she stuttered, looking seconds away from bursting into flames. "You still want to…"

"… scrap the pillow wall?" he provided, prompting her to nod. "Well, there doesn't seem to be much point in it…"

He didn't realize just how bad that sounded until she started looking like she was choking on dry air as if she was experiencing physical pain.

"Wait, no! I didn't mean it in a bad way!" he was quick to explain. "I just don't mind it! I really don't!"

She blinked, taken aback. "You don't?" she questioned.

He shook his head. "No. I mean, I was a little surprised at first and sometimes my arm is a bit numb when I wake but… well, it's no harm. You're just sleeping. And it's not like you have never slept on me before… like you're really tired on the train ride back from a job… it's really not that different, setting aside."

He actually did have a point there – in fact, she had told herself that at least a couple of times in the past few days… she really just hadn't expected Jellal to actually share that view. He was usually so hesitant about… well, progressing in their relationship, fighting guilt all the way. Could this be a sign of improvement in that area? "So you really don't mind? You do want the pillows gone?"

"Unless you would rather keep them…"

"I don't!" she immediately said.

"So… I suppose that settles it, then. Do you need help putting them away?"

She shook her head. "What for? They're already gone."

And once he looked around, he came to realize that they had, indeed, actually vanished, presumably into her requip space. Mavis, she was quick at bouncing back.

That night, she felt the need to make a disclaimer before getting into bed.

"If I get too clingy, just kick me," she stated, standing on the opposite side of the bed from him.

He frowned, pausing in the process of pulling back the covers. "What? I'm not going to kick you."

"Why not? I am almost certain that if you did, I would back away."

"Maybe you would, but I'm not even going to try if it involves hitting you."

"Oh, please, it would hardly put a dent on me. And is it even considered hitting when you have a legitimate purpose? I'm sure it doesn't, or else Natsu and Gray would think I was a monster with all the times I have bashed their heads together to stop their petty fights."

Jellal was 80% sure that they actually did. "Erza, I am not kicking you and that is final. I told you that I didn't mind you…" Cuddling? Snuggling? Nestling? "…using me for a pillow and I meant that." And with that, he resumed getting into the bed.

Erza hesitated in doing the same, observing him deep in thought. "You really, really don't?" she asked, just to be sure.

"I really, really don't," he reassured her.

And so after waiting one moment to let it sink, she finally accepted it and started getting into the bed herself.

Unlike in the previous nights, in which they had has their backs turned on each other from the moment they got under the sheets, for the sake of not facing one another with all the embarrassment that entailed, that day it was the very opposite and to be honest, well, it wasn't so bad, really…

"So," Erza prompted.

"So…" Jellal repeated.

"I guess this is goodnight," she stated.

He nodded before briefly turning to turn off the lights on his bedside lamp and then facing her again. As they lay on their sides, turned to one another, their hands rested right next to each others, so close that their fingers were practically touching. "Goodnight," he responded.

Not one hour passed before Erza conquered the space between them and Jellal complied without even waking up. They slept for ten hours straight, their heads completely and utterly dreamless – when they woke up, the embarrassment was reduced to a minimum since they had already acknowledged the situation and they finally admitted to themselves that the past few nights had contained the best sleep they had had in over a decade. Were Erza Scarlet not a complete blind-spot for him when it came to scheming and deception of any kind, he might have suspected that what happened the following day was somewhat related to the pleasantness of their sleeping conditions.

"There's mold," Erza gravely announced on a slightly-trembling voice after her inspection of her previously waterlogged mattress.

"Mold?!" Jellal exclaimed, leaning closer to the mattress to try and spot it. "Where? I don't see it."

"Well, of... of course you don't!" she managed to say. "It takes years to sharpen the vision of my magical eye to the level mine provides!" she stated, pointing at the one that had been replaced after the tower. She wasn't exactly lying - her eye had extremely sharp vision and she could see something in that mattress, although it could just as easily be caked dust. "There's mold, Jellal. Right there!"

Again, he couldn't see anything where she was pointing. But, in his mind, Erza was above reproach, so if she sounded so certain, there was just no way he could question her. "Okay, so what do we do about it? I wonder if there is some sort of specialized mold-cleaning-product for mattresses at the drug store..."

"Nonsense! What if it is spreading inside?! This is a custom-made, one of a kind mattress with only the best materials ergonomic engineering could buy! Obviously it needs to be professionally sanitized! I will get in touch with the manufacturers immediately!"

She did get in touch with them and ordered the mattress to go through five separate cleaning cycles (one could never be too careful) in a facility located three days away, totaling something between two and three weeks of downtime for the mattress. Two to three weeks she would have to spend in the hospitality of Jellal's bed.

Things progressed quickly from there – with every morning that they woke up tangled in each other, they would reduce the distance between them on the bed at the time they fell asleep little by little. It all culminated on the fifth night since Erza's mattress had been taken away in which she gathered her courage and up and crawled right into a slightly-surprised Jellal's arms without preamble. "We both know what is going to happen… might as well just get to it," was the only argument she managed to give in the midst of her embarrassment and Jellal couldn't deny it because, well, they did know.

And so, Erza's nightly conquering of the bed ceased… basically because there was no need for it, having already reached her goal – cuddling with her bed-partner – even before falling asleep.

It became a habit, although it showed variations in format. One time, Jellal was completely immersed in the book he was reading in bed, propped up against the headboard, and Erza just up and placed a pillow on his lap, going to sleep there because his chest was too out of reach in its upright position. Another time, Erza went away on an overnight job with her team and Jellal's night was positively miserable due to the feeling of something missing. When he arrived home from a brief trip to the guild the following day and found an exhausted redhead basically passed out on the bed with her armor still on, he was so glad that he just crawled in there too, wrapped his arms around her and had a nap with her even though the metal armor was extremely uncomfortable to hold onto. It still beat the sleep he had had on her absence.

By the two-week mark, their sleeping arrangement was completely ingrained in their routine and Jellal was dreading the time when the mattress would come back. Thankfully, there was a hiccup with delivery that meant they would definitely reach the three-week mark before it came back, but still, the fact that the blasted mattress was coming back and their excuse to share a bed was about run out had him moping around. For some reason, his mind failed to reach the conclusion that maybe he should address that matter with Erza and possibly agree to extend their arrangement into a more permanent basis. That was just too presumptuous for his mind to process.

Erza didn't fail to notice his general downcast behavior and although she didn't question him about the reason for it, she fought to get him into better spirits.

"Mira told me that the Summer Festival is starting tomorrow," she informed him over breakfast about three days before the mattress was due to return.

"Magnolia has a Summer Festival?" he question, never having heard of it before.

She nodded. "It is usually in the beginning of the season but I think this year it was delayed until the weather showed improvement."

"Ah… that makes sense. A summer festival wouldn't be very pleasant to have in the rain," he agreed.

"So, do you want to go tomorrow night? On a date?" she suggested.

"Oh…" he mumbled. That wasn't something they did very often, going on dates… at least on dates outside of the house. Still, they had done it enough times that he felt comfortable in doing so – they usually ended up enjoying themselves quite a bit and he took special pleasure in seeing Erza enjoying herself. So there could only be an answer for that question. "Alright. Tomorrow night."

She smiled. "Great. I look forward to it."

Unlike their few previous dates, which had either been just with the two of them or in confectionary festivals out of town where nobody knew them, that one was littered with members of Fairy Tail, which actually made it all the more enjoyable. They ate sweets with Wendy and Carla, took a boat ride with Mira and a slightly grumpy Laxus, watched fireworks with Lucy, Meredy and Juvia and competed on carnival games with Natsu and Gray. Erza took competition maybe a little too seriously and won more prizes than she should have, which he carried all around the festival grounds for her, up until she decided to just go ahead and give some prizes to Natsu and Gray for them to give to their dates and then bestow all the rest on little Asuka, who was more than happy to accept. Of course, they managed to have some time alone, pic-nicking together by the side of the river with food they had gotten from the many food stands stationed around the town and sneaking quick little kisses in between tasting just about every flavor of ice-cream in the nearest truck.

It was long past midnight when they found themselves making their way along the familiar road home in comfortable silence, as often was the case after having a date. Their house was as they had left it when they came in and, usually, that would be the time when they stopped in the living room for a moment and shared a goodnight kiss before each of them retreated into their separate rooms.

The thing was, there were no separate rooms that time, so with no need for parting, they simply followed their usual routine of heading straight into Jellal's room in order to get ready for bed.

He took a brief interlude in the bathroom in order to change into his sleeping clothes and returned to the room to find Erza sitting cross-legged on the bed, already wearing hers.

"Tonight was very enjoyable," she said with a smile, seeing him moving around the bed to sit on his side. That was usually the conversation they had in the living room before parting ways.

He smiled back. "It was. I liked having everyone around too. It made it all the more interesting."

She nodded. "Me too. We ought to have more dates in town. Especially in festival settings like this one."

"When is the next one? Festival in town, I mean," he questioned.

"Not until late October, but that is Fantasia. We will not be able to enjoy much of it until after the parade, with all the work Fairy Tail usually puts into it," she explained.

"I'm sure there will be plenty of time after."

"Usually, there is. The fireworks are even bigger than today's during Fantasia," she informed him.

"Sounds like something worth enjoying."

The redhead smiled. "It's a date, then. Although," she continued, "we still have not quite finished this one."

He raised his eyebrows. "We haven't?"

"Aren't you forgetting something?" she asked, looking the tiniest bit disappointed.

"I am?"

She sighed. "You are hopeless," she declared, although she didn't sound all that annoyed about it. And then, without preamble she got on her knees and crawled across the bed, closer to him. Then, settling right in front of him, she cupped his cheek with her hand and touched his lips with her own.

Jellal felt his entire body freezing. He knew that was meant to be their usual 'thank you for the date, goodnight' kiss, but immediately he felt something different about it. Maybe it was the fact that they were kissing while on a bed. Maybe it was the fact that their relationship had been taken exponential strides lately and that was the culmination of it all. All he knew was that there was a strange dynamic to it. Strange but not bad – in fact, it was the very opposite: good; very good… so good that it was actually enthralling. And that was what led to what happened next.

The first kiss broke quite fast – it was sweet, loving and full of feeling but the strange dynamic of it remained in the air even as their lips remained apart. For a whole minute they were just there, eyes on each other's breathing hard. Then, something clicked and before they knew it, they were kissing again, that time with much more passion.

They couldn't explain what was happening. I was like their bodies were on auto-pilot and they couldn't get enough of each other. Things had gotten a little passionate before during their cuddles on the couch or sometimes even during random kisses around the house but never like that. Never so out-of control and intensely needy that one moment they were sharing one single kiss and the other their hands were just roaming everywhere, hers travelling mostly down his back, his in her hair and up against her side, so, so presumptuously under the shirt of her pajamas. They weren't even sure in what exact moment they had gone from sitting on the bed to laying down on it but they were most definitely horizontal, first on their sides and then Jellal on his back with Erza astride him as her lips desperately refused to leave his.

Things could have escalated very quickly. They could have, had one stray arm not knocked the bedside lamp down and sent it crashing on the floor, which brought back Jellal's consciousness (or rather, his ability to grasp the existence of anything other than Erza in the universe), making him suddenly aware of the position they were in.

"Oh god," he managed to say, by some miracle managing to drag his lips away from her demanding ones. "Erza, we need to stop."

"What?" was her unfocused response.

"This. We… need to stop before… before it gets out of hand," he told her.

It was only a few moments later that it seemed to dawn on her, if her face was anything to go by. "Oh. Oh my god." And just like that, she rolled completely off him, her face incredibly red as she sat back, practically on the opposite edge of the bed inches away from falling.

He didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say, really. Mostly because he didn't know what in God's name had happened.

Erza, apparently, didn't. "What… what was that?" She looked mildly mortified by the recent events.

"I have no idea."

She hesitated for a moment. "Do… do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

Maybe. Possibly. But right now… right now he didn't think he could. "Could it wait for the morning?"

She nodded. "Yes. Let's… let's just sleep now," Erza said, out of breath as she moved to get under the covers

He did just the same, looking forward to just close his eyes, go to sleep and clear his mind. Before he did, however, he noticed Erza looking at him a little strangely from her side of the bed.

"What… what is it?"

She hesitated a little. "Is it still acceptable if I…?" She vaguely gestured at his chest before stopping and giving him a serious look, like she was waiting for an answer.

He was confused for a moment before understanding what she meant – she was asking if she could still use him for a pillow. "Oh… ah, sure."

She looked relieved upon hearing it so, after he leaned back against the mattress and turned off the lights, she moved to cuddle up to him, a little more tentatively than usual. There were maybe a couple of minutes in which she hesitated before going ahead and asking the question at the tip of her tongue.

"Are you… bothered?"

"Bothered?" he questioned, confused.

"By what happened just now. Did you hate it?"

He shook his head. "Never. It was… good," he indicated before pausing. "Maybe a little too good."

She was, again, relieved to hear that and it relaxed her enough that she dared to shake her head against his chest. "No such thing…"

They ended up not talking about it in the morning, mostly because he had to rush out before dawn, when his team mates came to collect him for an urgent mission – apparently, Macbeth and Sorano had taken a mission nearby that was a little too much for them to chew, culminating on them having to ask their old guildmates for urgent help.

"We will talk later," Erza said as she saw him off at the door.

He sighed. "I'm sorry."

She shook her head, indicating there was no need for that. "Don't be." Then, she reached forward a placed a kiss on his cheek, which had Meredy awing at a distance as she pretended not to spy on them. "Take care."

He sighed. "You too."

The job wasn't as straightforward as he would have predicted – Sorano and Macbeth were in real trouble and it took quite an amount of effort to get them out of it, which had the mission extending overnight.

He returned late on the second day, relieved that his former companions had been returned to Sabertooth in mostly good shape (some bumps here, some bruises there) and it wasn't until he spotted light up in Erza's room that his mood soured. The mattress, he recalled… it must already be back… which meant he had just missed his last night with Erza.

…

He must have spent about five minutes outside looking at the lit up window in despair over reaching that conclusion. Why?

It took practically dragging himself to get inside the house and he was quick to head into his room, intending to do nothing more than moping in his cold, lonely bed for at least an hour.

But then, a problem presented himself – there was no sign of his bed. Literally. As in it physically was not in the room.

Have we been robbed? He thought to himself.

"Oh, you're back," he heard a familiar voice saying behind him.

He turned around slowly, facing the redhead with a mildly alarmed look on his face. "My bed is gone."

"It is," she confirmed.

"What… what happened to it?"

"Oh, it's at the carpenter's," she informed him.

He blinked. "The carpenter's," he repeated, trying to make sense of it.

"Yes. Do you not recall how I broke the frame with that pillow-wall? It needed to be fixed and now that we have an alternative bed upstairs, it's as good a time as any to do so."

It seemed too much information to sink in at once, so he actually waited something like thirty seconds to respond. "Upstairs."

"Yes. My mattress is back."

He blinked for a few moments, letting it sink in that 'upstairs' was synonym to 'her room' and by extension 'her bed'. "So… I'm going to sleep upstairs? In your bed?" he asked just to make sure. There was a mix of giddiness and disbelief in his tone.

She nodded. "Where else? I believe it is my turn to return the hospitality that you have been providing me with."

Two things crossed his mind at that moment: one – he and Erza wouldn't be going back to sleeping in separate beds just yet, which was such a reief; two – he was going to be sleeping in Erza's bed. He wondered why, in his mind, the thought of sharing her bed felt so much more… illicit than them sharing his. It felt just plain… wrong. Really, just being in her room… it was like entering a temple and daring to think of sleeping on the floor – a part of him felt like he was not worthy.

The thing was, despite all that, he really, really wanted to stay there because that was where Erza was. He felt a bit like an addict – an addict who really needed to sleep cuddled up to his redhead despite his better judgment. So, he dared to give in. He dared to lay on the bed… and that was the final nail on his coffin.

"Oh my god…" he mumbled in wonder. "This mattress. It's just… it's just so…"

"Amazingly comfortable?" she provided, lying down herself and rolling left and right, because the damn thing was just so huge that she had enough space to roll around even with another person in the vicinity. "Heavenly-made? Worth every penny?" She rolled around a little more and then appeared to actually pet the mattress as if it was a living thing. "Oh, how I missed you."

He blinked. "Are you speaking to the bed?"

"If it's any consolation, I did miss you too," she provided and then, without any warning, reached over and placed the quickest kiss right there on his lips before pulling back, suddenly realizing what she had done, because, well, last time they had kissed in bed… "S-sorry," she stuttered, looking way.

Although he was still a bit surprised himself but was quick to shake his head. "It… it's fine," he reassured her before a long moment of silence stretched between them. It occurred to him that silence was probably not a very good idea – it was the very opposite of what they should be doing, really. "We… we were due to talk about… something, weren't we?"

"Ah," Erza mumbled, sounding a tad nervous. "We were."

"Good."

But again, for a while, only silence came for a minute or two. That time, she was the one to break it. "Things are changing, are they not?"

He nodded. "Yes… they are."

For a while, things had been changing between them. Progressing, one might call it, and though he hadn't spent much time musing about it, their relationship had grown exponentially in a short span of time. He had little doubt that their sleeping habits had prompted that somehow, maybe through the physical contact and the mutual comfort they had been unspokenly providing each other with, maybe due to the fact that one could keep no secrets or façades as they slept and that had made them all the more real for one another – he, for one, could tell that Erza was far from the idealized version of herself that had constantly lived in his mind as he roamed around with Crime Sorciére, yet despite all the faults he had come to know (bed-hog, candy-addict, closet-child-in-a-woman's-body), he had no doubt that, if anything, that only made his love for her run deeper. He wondered if she saw it too and felt the same about him…

She, in turn, seemed to be wondering the same about him. "Are you… comfortable with those changes?"

He looked at her for a moment before replying. "Are you?"

She blushed a little. "I… I am. I had… hoped things would develop like this." But then, she shook her head and narrowed her eyes at him. "Hey! Didn't I ask you first? A question does not answer another question."

He felt suddenly bold – very bold and silently reached with his hand to brush the side of her face before reaching forward and placing a kiss on her sweet lips. "This one did," he told her afterwards.

Small displays of affection soon abounded. A kiss here, a hug there… make-out sessions started making their way into the bed, becoming gradually more heated and closer in between. They never really did cross the line as closely as they had on the first time, though they might have come close a handful of times.

Bed-sharing also started extending outside of their… no, Erza's bedroom. Rather than booking two rooms in an inn during their jobs together they would go for just one and even when it came to camping they seemed utterly unable to sleep apart anymore.

"I liked the pattern," Erza stated with the tiniest bit of embarrassment in her voice the first time she had produced what had to be the largest sleeping bag Jellal had ever seen (indeed, covered in cute strawberry-print). "I didn't even notice it was a couple-sized sleeping bag until it was too late to return it. So, well, we might as well just use it."

They did give it a lot of use, especially in muggy mid August nights when it was actually hotter indoors then it was outside thanks to the soft breeze that the outdoors provided. Often there wasn't a single cloud on the sky and they would spend the whole night taking turns between watching the stars and exploring each other's lips just because.

It was in one of those nights that the line was finally crossed.

Their usual campground was quite secluded, near the top of a cliff and only accessible by a cave that not many people knew about. The night was particularly pleasant, weather-wise, and Jellal has been actually excited about it because that night he would be able to show her the peak of the 'one of the most remarkable meteor showers of the year'. They had even made a date out of it, with flowers, chocolate and a picnic basket assembled by Mira.

Erza had to admit the shooting stars had been quite the sight to see, especially in good company. Jellal, in all his astronomy-enthusiast excitement, had been cheerful to an almost childish level that night, which she found particularly enthralling since seeing him so happy and carefree was a rarity on itself.

The kissing started out as little pecks between bites of chocolate-covered strawberries, courtesy of Mira, and various other treats. It wasn't until they had spent hours watching stars ("Meteors," Jellal would say, "they are meteors, not stars.") shooting above them that it started going further with wandering hands and lips travelling down to brush particularly sensitive spots on each other's necks.

The warning, as usual, came from Jellal right at the last moment. "We need stop," he said, nearly out of breath. "We need to stop before… before things start escalating very… quickly."

But rather than stopping, as she usually did, Erza responded with a question that time.

"Is that a bad thing?" she questioned breathily, looking like a goddess in his eyes with her hair gloriously fanned all around her head.

He blinked. "Erza?"

Just then, she reached up and kissed him again, putting a whole world of meaning into that kiss. If he still had any doubt about what she wanted right at that moment, it faded away the moment that the hand he had resting in her hip ceased feeling a single stitch of clothing under it. Only soft, supple skin.

Her face looked very much embarrassed when the kiss broke – he had no doubt that under different lightening it would have looked tremendously red. She was putting it all out there and felt terribly afraid that he would refuse her anyway.

She didn't even have it in her to say more than the word "Please?" after that.

He in turn, didn't have it in him to refuse her. "Oh, Erza…" he said with a sigh, before utterly giving into her wishes (which, if he was honest, he would go ahead and say that were his as well).

It was the first of what would be many nights of lovemaking – the sweet, inexperienced and just the tiniest bit awkward kind that wasn't particularly world-shattering but showed all the promise and delight that was them getting to know each other in a level they hadn't had a chance to yet…

Afterwards, they lay under the stars in a tangle of limbs, his arm around her as she lazily rested sideways with her back against his front. She smiled sleepily to herself, noticing how perfect her fingers looked while laced with his and he just buried his face in that pool of red hair taking in her smell and thinking himself in heaven. While the moment lasted, there wasn't a single care in their world.

It stretched past that night, the feeling of wonder and newness that came with the new facet of their relationship. And if things had been developing quickly between them up until then, they only sped up after that day as remaining boundaries began to crumble and those little hesitancies and remaining bits of distance between them started to disappear in favor of more obvious closeness and freedom with their gestures, expressed through things like Erza sneaking into the shower when he was already there without even asking or Jellal waking up before her and spontaneously thinking it would probably be a good idea to wake her up with a little session of kissing, something that a few weeks before would have been an unthinkable assumption from his part, as far as he was concerned. Unlike before, when their living conditions had been a bit puzzling and awkward for an unknowing outsider, now they could be easily identified as a standard cohabitating couple that was very much in love.

Maybe that was what made it so easy for them to actually forget for quite some time that Jellal was supposed to have a bed of his own downstairs.

Most of his clothes and items had been taken upstairs early on his 'temporary move' for the 'sake of practically' ("You have plenty of space in the wardrobe and the dressers," Erza had argued back. "I never use them, so you might as well put something there."). As such, since he had taken most of his things with him, for several weeks he didn't actually have the need to go back into 'his' room. But as time passed and fall arrived, the weather became colder and less prone to summery clothing, which meant that the few out-of-season clothes that he had left downstairs thinking he wouldn't need them at the peak of summer needed to be retrieved.

It was around that time that he remembered that the bed that was supposed to be in the downstairs room was still gone.

"Hey, Erza?" he inquired, walking down to the basement, where she was busy polishing armor. "Do you know why it is taking so long for the carpenter to finish fixing the bed?"

For a moment, she was confused. "What bed?"

"The downstairs one. My bed, I suppose," he stated.

She felt a chill just from hearing him say that. "Oh, t-that bed," she said, sounding a little nervous.

"Have you heard anything about it?"

"T-the carpenter is still busy with it," she said quickly, hoping that would end the conversation.

"Really?" he replied, sounding a little unconvinced.

"Of course! Why are you so interested in the bed all of a sudden? Are you that eager to get back to it? Is there something wrong with the one upstairs?!" she questioned, sounding almost desperate.

"What? No – the one upstairs is just fine. It's just that it's been nearly two months and that sounds like an awful lot of time to fix a little broken piece of a bed's headboard…"

"Carpentry is an art, Jellal! Good work takes time! Respect the artistry!"

He blinked, a little baffled by the passion with which she seemed to be defending the carpenter's performance. "O-okay," he mumbled. "But… are you alright? You sound a little stressed."

She was stressed. Defending her own insane thinking was stressing. "It's nothing."

"Alright, if you say so," he agreed, already backing out, seeing that she clearly didn't want to talk about it. "I'll just go back upstairs and leave you to your polishing."

But as she saw him so understandingly backing out despite the fact that she had all but chewed him out because of something that he was in no way to blame for – something that wouldn't have happened, weren't it for her deception – she started feeling bad. Very bad. And not just for what had just happened – more like the entire thing altogether…

So, really, she just couldn't take it anymore.

"Wait, Jellal," she called back, making him cease his stride up the stairs. "I'm sorry."

"Oh. No, it's okay – I'm not mad or anything," he assured her immediately. "You're right, the carpenter is probably very busy and I wasn't really taking that into consideration…"

Always making excuses for her… "No, he is not. And it's not okay. There…" she paused, swallowing hard "… there are a few things that I have not been quite honest about."

Silent, he raised an eyebrow, wondering what that was all about.

And so, she told him everything, starting with the mold in her mattress possibly not being mold and the two-week cleaning process that ensued being clearly overkill and ending with the fact that she had only been so quick to send his bed away for repairs as soon as hers had returned because she desperately did not want them to go back to sleeping in separate beds, let alone separate rooms.

"I may have… commissioned some extra work on your bed too in order to have the repair period extended," she mumbled, looking down in deep shame.

He just blinked, not sure of what to say. Part of him was a bit shocked that she had been capable of doing all that scheming.

"I am sorry for deceiving you, but I am not sorry about the results," she declared, a bit defiantly.

Again, he didn't say anything for a while.

"Jellal?" she questioned, a bit fearful. Was he mad?

And then, he sighed, shaking his head a little. "Erza… for god's sake, please have that bed brought back once and for all. I'll gather up my things upstairs."

Her heart sunk as she saw him leaving. He was mad. Of course he was! She had been moving strings behind his back in order to keep him from leaving and now that he knew, of course the whole thing would fall apart and he would leave anyway!

It was her own fault, she knew, but it still hurt. God, it hurt. She couldn't let it happen! No, she had to stop it. She would apologize, she would promise she wouldn't do it again… she just couldn't let things regress like that all of a sudden. Not after they had made so much progress.

So, she sped up the stairs in search for him, first looking in his downstairs room, which she found empty, and then up in hers, where she finally spotted him… putting things away in a drawer rather than taking them out.

"You're… you're not leaving."

He turned around, raising an eyebrow in confusion. "Leaving? Why would I be leaving?"

"But… you asked for the bed back…."

"Of course I did – what did you need it over at the carpenter's for?"

"And… you said you would be gathering your things…"

"I did. I got them from downstairs to move them up here," he pointed out. "Isn't that what you wanted? For me to move up here?"

She couldn't take it anymore – she rushed across the room and hugged him. "Thank you."

"Of course." Although, if he was a bit honest, he had admit that it wasn't a selfless decision at all. "Just… Erza, next time you want something of me and think of a really creative, yet convoluted way to achieve it, could you just… ask instead?"

She was nodding even before he could finish the question. "Yes, of course! I will. I…" She paused and then squeezed him a little harder. "Thank you for staying."

He squeezed her back. "Thank you for letting me."

The downstairs bed was returned to the house two days later and when Jellal finally saw it fully assembled in his old room, he… well, he felt a little confused.

"Erza, I think they brought the wrong bed," he pointed out. The bedframe standing in front of him was a four-poster affair with rails for curtains, intricate carving work and everything – it looked like something one would see in a palace, not in the room where his old, fairly spartan bed had been.

"No, this is the correct one," Erza pointed out. "I checked all the paperwork with the delivery people."

Jellal blinked. "But… how? It's a completely different bed!"

"I… I did mention that I ordered some extra work done," Erza mumbled, sounding a little… embarrassed by her actions.

He stared at the bed for several seconds, adding up values in his mind to try and figure out just how much Erza had spent with that scheme. The number was unthinkable. "Erza remember how I told you to just ask next time you want something from me?" he questioned.

"Yes," she replied.

"For god's sake, please do," he stated.

"Ah," she mumbled. "I will." She paused for a second, looking at the bed thoughtfully. " But… well, since we do have a brand new old bed now…"

"Yes?"

"Have you ever heard the word 'Christening' applied to furniture?"

He was silent for a moment. And then… "I'll get the sheets."

Maybe Erza's scheming was worth something, after all.

The End

A/N: I hope you liked it! Feedback is very welcome :)