Bickslow understood a few things.
He understood that Lucy was more confused than anything. He learnt that she was confused as to why she was so distressed, and he understood that she really just needed her friends. To Bickslow, that made perfect sense, because if you had woken up in another world in an entirely different situation to what you were used to, you'd be confused and you'd need to talk about it. He got that.
But, as it turns out, that was exactly what had happened anyway. Still though, Lucy had seemed to be set on believing that she couldn't talk about it – not to Natsu or Levy, at least.
Then, though, he learned that she was just as confused about the whole not-quite-envious of the whole Lisanna and Natsu thing. It was more of a case that she felt Natsu had been taken away from her, and the more that Bickslow thought that it, the more that made sense too. After all, Natsu was supposed to be her best friend and he was technically married to someone else in that world.
The only thing that hadn't made sense to Bickslow was Lucy saying she didn't actually like Natsu. That he didn't believe. Well, not entirely.
So as Bickslow collapsed onto the lounge a little while later, he tried to think of something to do for the afternoon. He couldn't do anything that would make much noise since Ingrid was down for the count again, and Lucy had decided she was going to just rest for a while, which, Bickslow thought she kind of needed, so he'd left her in peace.
He stared up at the soulless totems on the shelf. What kind of world doesn't have magic? Well, apart from Edolas. But Bickslow didn't really understand the whole Edolas and Mystogan situation anyway. Erza had tried explaining it to himself and Cana and he was mostly blind drunk at that point anyway, so it had really just gone in one ear and out the other.
As Bickslow continued contemplating how he'd ended up in Magnolia 2.0 without any magic whatsoever, despite his beloved babies being there (just without souls, it seemed), he felt something vibrate in his back pocket. Phone. It's your phone, remember? He pulled the phone from his pocket and stared at the screen as he laid back down.
Below the time at the top of the screen sat a message.
GAJEEL
SLIDE TO VIEW MESSAGE
Slide to view message? Ah, right. That explains the 'Slide to Unlock' thing at the bottom. It was a new screen. There was a thin bar at the top with the time in the centre, and then a smaller green rectangle in the top right corner. Below that was a whole bunch of messages. Apparently all from Gajeel, considering it had 'Gajeel' at the top. Bickslow read through some of them before getting to the newest one.
HOW THE FUCK DID YOU DEAL WITH BLONDIE WHEN SHE WAS PREGNANT?!
Are you watching the game on Friday? If so, bring booze. A LOT OF IT.
I'm never having sex again.
Bickslow couldn't help but chuckle quietly to himself at them. Apparently the Gajeel of Magnolia 2.0 had been having a hard time with Levy, and he was picturing the small blue-haired woman throwing countless books at the guy. It was a vivid picture, considering he'd seen it happen in the guild multiple times before.
But none of those messages were the one he had just received. Bickslow scrolled through them until he reached the bottom, occasionally chuckling at what he assumed were his own stupid responses since they were in a different colour and on the opposite edge of the screen.
He found the one he was looking for, and he read the message from Gajeel.
Shrimp wants to know if Bunny-girl is okay.
Also, these things are fucking amazing.
He realised Gajeel was right – they were actually pretty amazing. Not only could you call people without seeing their face, but you could send short messages to them. Plus, it was small enough to fit in your pocket, unlike the communications lacrima which had to be carried in its own separate bag. Those were always frustrating to use.
But was Lucy okay? Bickslow noticed that she'd seemed to cheer up a bit after actually talking about it. So if she wasn't completely okay, she was at least better, right?
Hell, if she still wasn't okay, Bickslow knew he was going to make sure that she would be. Partly because if they did end up stuck in Magnolia 2.0 for more than a day, then he didn't really want to be stuck with a gloomy and depressed Lucy Heartfilia.
Now to figure out how to reply…
When he pressed the screen, the bottom half of the screen turned into a keyboard. Bickslow stared at the order of the letters. Q was first on the top row. Why the hell would 'Q' be first? Isn't 'A' the first letter of the alphabet?! Putting his confusion aside, he slowly and carefully typed out his response, finding himself amazed that he managed to hit mostly the correct letters, and when he did screw up a word by pressing the wrong letter, it would automatically correct it. He was almost convinced magic did exist. Just… in the form of phones.
So as he re-read the short message, he pressed the green send button next to where it had shown up, and the message moved up to just below the one Gajeel had sent him before.
I think so.
A simple reply, but he really did think she was okay, so it was the truth.
Bickslow dropped the phone to his stomach, and as soon as his eyes lifted to stare at the ceiling, the phone vibrated again. Another message from Gajeel.
Shrimp wants to know what floor and apartment you're in.
He didn't know Levy wanted to know, but he was going to find out anyway. Bickslow had to get up from the lounge to do that, though. He knew the floor, but not the apartment number. So begrudgingly, he pushed himself up and made his way over to the door, pulling it open to see the number on the door.
He typed out another response:
24th floor. 243. Why?
As Bickslow waited for Gajeel to respond, he went back to the lounge. He still needed to find something to do, and that was proving to be difficult when he didn't know what half of the things in the room did. Bickslow usually occupied his time with drinking in the guild or annoying the hell out of Evergreen, but he couldn't do either of those.
Deciding he had nothing to lose, Bickslow cautiously pressed the button that was on the bottom of the phone. He figured it was either going to cause something to blow up, or it would just change the screen again, not that he really cared what the outcome was anyway.
Fortunately (or unfortunately), the button only made the screen change. Instead of looking at a whole bunch of messages between himself and Gajeel, he was staring at multiple squares with weird and colourful icons with words beneath them. They ranged from Contacts, Calculator, and Clock to Messages, M. Banking, and Music.
Trying to figure out how it worked, he pressed the Messages one, and it took him back to a screen with messages from more than just Gajeel. Gajeel's name was at the top with a preview of the last message he'd sent, but below that was Lucy, followed by Boss Man, and then Freed. Scrolling down there were even more messages, but he didn't feel like opening them, so instead he just closed all of the messages once again.
As he closed them all, he found his attention being drawn to one particular icon in the top right. Photos. Bickslow felt like if he wanted to get an insight into what his life was supposed to have been like in that world, then photos would help him do so. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't a little bit curious, and what was that old saying?
A picture paints a thousand words.
And so as Bickslow scrolled through the hundreds of thumbnails, occasionally opening up some of them to get a better look, he found himself becoming strangely envious of himself. Well, the other him, at least.
Bickslow had always told himself that one day, he'd settle down with someone; fall in love, get married, have kids. That kind of thing. It wasn't like he'd wanted it any time soon – in fact, he'd come to the conclusion he'd most likely be in his thirties before anything like that happened, and he was having too much fun with his life as it was. He liked to be entertained. Constantly needing to be doing something fun; having fun. That was just the type of person Bickslow was. He never took anything seriously, and that included women and dating or anything even remotely close to that. It just wasn't what he did.
But… the original Bickslow of Magnolia 2.0 had all of that. The wife who he assumed he had to have been in love with to marry, and the kid. They were supposed to happy in their own little family. He was supposed to be in love with Lucy, which in itself was as a big of a mystery as the entire waking-up-in-a-different-world situation.
More wedding photos, photos of Ingrid, photos of… Laxus? And Freed, and Ever, and hell, just about everyone that had been in Laxus' apartment that morning. But it didn't matter what the subject of the photo was, the main thing was that he was apparently happy in that world, and that's what made him jealous of himself. Sure, Bickslow was happy in his own world, the one that he missed, but it was a different kind of happy.
There was a knock on the door and Bickslow was brought from his thoughts, which was a little bit of a relief. It was getting a tad dark in his mind, and he didn't really enjoy it – much like everyone else on the planet.
"Better not be that Claire person again," Bickslow muttered as he pulled the door open. He was a little shocked to see Levy standing in front of Gajeel, who was hugging the black and white cat yet again.
"Where's Lu?" Levy asked as she pushed her way past Bickslow and into the apartment with Gajeel following suit.
Bickslow closed the door softly as he turned around. So that was why she asked what floor the apartment was on. "Uh, in the bedroom down the end," he answered, pointing down the hall and to the closed door at the very end.
Levy nodded as she spun on her heel and started heading towards the room before she stopped and turned her head over her shoulder, narrowing her eyes slightly and asking, "Did you talk to her?"
"Yeah…"
"Good." The small (or not so small in her current state) woman huffed before her head spun back around and she headed down the hall and into the bedroom, closing the door behind her quietly.
And at that moment, Bickslow was left wondering (for what felt like the hundredth time that day) what in the hell was going on.
"So…" Gajeel began slowly. "Wanna drink?" he asked with a sly grin as Lily jumped from his arms, revealing the bottle of whiskey that the cat had apparently been sitting on.
"This is why I'm friends with you."
Lucy and Levy finally emerged from the room early in the evening. The beginnings of the sunset could be seen from the windows in the lounge room; the predominantly blue sky tinged with a shade of orange.
The two women had talked, laughed, squealed, and cried, and anything and everything else between. Half of the time, it was a mix of two. They talked about Magnolia 2.0 and all of the familiar faces, laughed about Lucy being married to Bickslow of all people, squealed about Levy being pregnant and then cried about being married and pregnant, and then laughed over it.
It had cheered Lucy up even more because Levy was one of her best friends, and best friends are always there to cheer you up. That being said, it wasn't like Bickslow had been completely useless. He had tried and mostly succeeded in his attempts to lift her mood. If anything, Lucy found herself glad she had ended up talking to him. Bickslow had been there when she had needed someone the most, and she was grateful.
But when Ingrid started crying, Lucy saw it as a sign to get out of bed and face the world again. After getting her changed, with Levy voicing her serious objections to being in Magnolia 2.0 for when she actually had to give birth, and, you know… become an actual parent, Lucy walked into the main living area holding Ingrid while Levy followed slowly behind her.
They both stopped at what they saw. Bickslow and Gajeel were slumped over the dining table, drinks still in hands while Lily was licking up the spillage on the table. The two were mumbling to each other in incoherent half-formed sentences between giggles. Giggles. Bickslow didn't giggle – he cackled, and Gajeel didn't either. Lucy honestly had no idea what to call Gajeel's laugh. It was just one of those things that sent a little bit of a chill down her spine each time he did it though, usually because she'd have had no idea he'd been standing behind her and listening.
Lucy was a little annoyed. She glanced at the clock that sat on the wall, and her jaw dropped slightly. It was barely past 5 p.m., and the two of them were drunk. Lucy didn't want to deal with a drunk Bickslow. Lucy didn't want to deal with a drunk anyone. Hell, she was basically going to be babysitting what was essentially her own daughter and husband, even if it was only going to be temporary (which, she still really hoped for).
So as she walked over to the high-chair and sat Ingrid down in it, she took the glasses from both of their hands and took the nearly empty bottle of whiskey away from them as they slurred their protests.
"Gajeel!" Levy hissed as she started pulling on Gajeel's ear, getting him out of the chair.
"Let go of… my ear… Shrimp," he mumbled as he stumbled his way into a standing position, continuing to be pulled by the ear and towards the door.
The blue-haired woman shot an apologetic smile to Lucy as she pulled the door open. "We should probably be leaving… Sorry, Lucy!" she called.
Gajeel managed to pull his ear free from the woman's grasp and stagged over to the bench, swiping the bottle of whiskey that he had brought (or as Bickslow had later learned, smuggled in). "Mine!" he said with a smirk before Levy grabbed the back of his shirt, pulling him back and out of the apartment with Lily following them out.
"Don't leave me!" Bickslow cried, his hand extending towards the now closed door as his head remained on the table.
"They already left," Lucy said as she placed a glass of water in front of him. "Drink it."
Bickslow sighed as his arm fell back to the table. "I thought he loved me," he said morosely, lifting his head slightly to take a sip from the glass.
Lucy shook her head with disapproval before she moved to the fridge, finally getting a chance to look what was in there since someone wasn't blocking her from doing so. Bottles of water, juices, fruits, vegetables. All sorts of things were piled onto the shelves and into the door, including a large punnet of strawberries and tubs of yogurt. So a god does exist.
She pulled out a small jar from one of the shelves on the door. Apple and Mango… something. Lucy wasn't entirely sure of it, but it had '4+ months' on the label and the back of it made it seem like it was safe to give Ingrid. With a shrug, she turned and closed the fridge with her foot as she made her way over to a drawer where she knew she'd seen spoons earlier. She twisted the lid off of the jar and sat down at the table, the small pink spoon in hand, and almost found herself considering actually trying whatever the stuff in her hand was supposed to be. She knew it had to have been a form of baby food, and if it was in the apartment, then Ingrid must have had something similar before.
Regardless of coming to the conclusion that it was safe, she dipped her pinkie in a tiny bit and brought it up to her mouth. It actually surprised her that it tasted like apples. And mango. Nothing more, nothing less.
If anything, the consistency freaked her out because it was like having a super-thick smoothie, but it wasn't terrible.
Her gaze flicked to Bickslow who was mumbling into the table. Lucy had no idea what he was saying, but she heard Gajeel get muttered a few times and then decided it was probably best she not know what he was saying.
So instead, she returned her focus to feeding Ingrid. As she picked up a small amount on the spoon and moved it over to Ingrid's mouth slowly, she didn't really know what to expect to happen. A part of her had a feeling Ingrid would refuse it and start crying again, but that's not what happened at all. She opened up that little mouth of hers without a single fuss and went to work on getting it down – making a mess of herself in the process.
"Oh, you like that, do you?" Lucy couldn't help but smile as she small child giggled slightly, making even more of a mess. Ingrid was making it easy for her (sort of), and if it had been a nightmare just to get her to eat pureed apples and mangos once, Lucy didn't know what she would do if she did actually end up stuck in that world with an actual baby, and not on a temporary basis.
"I do like it," Bickslow mumbled into the table again before lifting his head slightly, continuing to work his way through the water.
Lucy rolled her eyes as she gave Ingrid another spoonful of the pureed food. "Not you, you idiot."
As Lucy finished cleaning up Ingrid, Bickslow clumsily stood from the table with the intentions of making his way over to the lounge. Unfortunately, just as he was about to collapse over the back of the lounge and onto his stomach, he found himself being turned around and pushed down the hallway.
"What are you doing?" he groaned as he dug his heels into the ground in an attempt to stop moving. He just wanted to go collapse on the lounge. Was that so much to ask?
"You"—Lucy pushed her hands firmly against his back as he resisted moving, pushing even harder when he seemed to give up and let his feet slide along the hardwood floors—"need to go have a shower," she said. Lucy briefly wondered as to why she was helping him, but it was more of a case of helping herself. With the chance of still being in Magnolia 2.0 the next day, she didn't want to deal with a hungover Bickslow. So, if she could make his hangover just a little bit more bearable, she'd be making her life easier for herself.
It has nothing to do with actually helping Bickslow, she told herself. Nope, nothing at all. Even though I do kind of owe him for getting me talking…
A wicked grin formed on Bickslow's face as he turned his head over his shoulder, his tongue hanging from his mouth as it occasionally did. "Are you going to join me?"
"No!" she shrieked as she ducked her head, the heat rising on her cheeks. Lucy wondered how he could say such a thing (while keeping a somewhat straight face), but she then remembered it was Bickslow she was talking to. Well, he doesn't have a reputation for nothing.
"Aw, you're no fun," Bickslow pouted, chuckling to himself as Lucy finally pushed him into the bathroom with one final shove, slamming the door shut behind her before she returned back down the hall.
She shook her head as she picked up Ingrid again. No, no fun. Ever. Especially with Bickslow. Nothing about their situation was fun in the slightest.
"This isn't fun, is it, Ingrid?" she asked the baby, only to cause her to smile as she moved over to the lounge. Lucy couldn't help but laugh slightly, "Yeah, you have no idea what I'm talking about." That was fine, though.
