STA: Fun fact, I am terrible at remembering Lyon exists in relation to Gray. I only remembered him for this fic because I threw Lyredy in just to peeve Jellal.

Also, I wasn't kidding when I said the kiss comes up a lot.

-x-

Gray put up with Natsu for six days, and on the seventh, sent Natsu out with the mission of hand delivering a message to Lyon explaining the basics of his situation. There was no reason Gray couldn't call Lyon. They both had their own pocket sized Communication Lacrima, and Lyon would no doubt call anyway wanting more of an explanation than 'There was an accident with Zeref and now I'm pregnant. Tell no one.' The real purpose of the letter, aside from his first step towards coming out with his condition, was to get Natsu out of town.

If he'd simply told Natsu he wanted a day off, Natsu might have taken a job, or he might have gone to hang out with Lucy. Since Gray planned on seeing Lucy in private, that wasn't a risk he could afford.

He waited a good fifteen minutes after sending Natsu off before setting out on his own. The cold didn't bother him, but he'd yet to verify that it wouldn't bother the baby, so he wore a coat. Because Natsu had made hot chocolate before Gray resolved to see Lucy, he'd also filled a travel mug with warm chocolaty goodness. Loathe though he was to admit it, he couldn't turn down anything with chocolate in it as of late. Natsu actually melted chunks of chocolate into milk and added honey to make it even sweeter, rather than mixing instant hot chocolate packets from Gray's cupboard with hot water, and his hot chocolate was creamier than what Gray made for himself.

So Gray turned up at Lucy's doorstep in a winter coat clutching a warm mug. Such an out of place sight made Lucy pale.

"Are you still sick? What's wrong? Why do you have so many layers on?"

"It's winter," Gray said. "Isn't this a normal amount to wear?"

"Well…" Lucy looked at Gray's wet jeans and shoes, and then out her window at the foot and half of mostly fresh snow that the average person wouldn't venture into without snow pants and boots. "It's a good effort."

"Thanks? Can I come in?"

Lucy stepped aside for Gray, shutting the door after him.

"I was worried about you, you know. You didn't look good last time you were here. No one's seen you at the guild, and Juvia said you've been strange all week."

Gray gave a vague affirmative noise as he shed his coat. Juvia had been baby crazy all week, and Natsu couldn't field her. He'd tried. But he supposed he did at least look better than the last time he saw Lucy. His morning sickness had subsided for the day and he made a point to keep himself clean so Natsu wouldn't offer to wash him. His clothes hadn't been worn since the last time they were washed too.

"What happened."

"Natsu and I had a fight."

"That made you physically ill?"

"Kind of. There was some weirdness with Zeref and… It doesn't really matter right now."

It did, but he couldn't say it. If that letter to Lyon wasn't penned with ink and in Natsu's hands, Gray would snatch it back and tear it up before anyone could see it. He really didn't want to face telling anyone about his situation.

"Come to think of it, it's been a while since Natsu broke in here."

"He kept that up even after you two split?"

Lucy gave her room a weary look. "Well, he did it before we started dating too."

"On that subject…" No one ever successfully asked the two of them what happened. Both of them were always so quick to shut the subject down. "You and Natsu… What did you fight over?"

"Oh, everything. What to have for breakfast. Whether or not he could sleep in my bed. Whose clothes were whose. None of it was major, but we got into lots of silly arguments."

If Gray were a woman and found his boyfriend poking holes in condoms, he would blow his top. He knew Lucy would too, and grudgingly relinquished that theory.

"So what did you too break up over?"

Lucy turned to glare at him.

"I kissed Natsu," Gray said, which wasn't a lie. "But we got into a huge fight not long after and… I just want to know what exactly I'm dealing with."

"You and Natsu are a couple?"

Gray regretted implying that on so many levels, the least of which was that he now had to nip a rumor in the bud of him and Natsu as an item. More pressing at the moment was that Lucy looked almost grief stricken.

"Are you okay?" Gray asked. Lucy was the one to call it off, so he'd just assumed she was fine with Natsu dating again.

"Yes! I… Yes. It's just that… I didn't expect him… with a man."

"We're really not dating. It was thrown out there. That's all."

Lucy looked around her room, then gestured for Gray to sit in one of her chairs while she took the other. "It's nothing. Really. I ended things even though… Well… I ended things, so if Natsu's ready to move on… I guess can't complain."

For half a second Gray forgot about the pregnancy and wondered if Natsu didn't kiss him back because he wasn't ready to move on. Then he remembered that Natsu didn't kiss him back because he was only being nice to manipulate Gray, and that he didn't want Natsu to kiss him back anyway.

"So what happened?" Gray dared ask. "I thought it might have been something to do with children. The way he changed the subject when it came up, it just seemed like that was the issue."

"It was." Lucy paused, as if deciding whether or not to leave it at that. "Juvia…?"

"I'm not sleeping with her. I'm sure she has plenty of items to satisfy herself with that have all been custom made in my likeness." Given how many times people had seen him naked, she probably had a perfect replica dildo.

"It's really Natsu you're interested in? So you're not worried about kids then," Lucy mumbled, which was a perfectly fair assumption to make, but the furthest thing from true. Gray took a sip of his hot chocolate and let its warm goodness push back all the bad thoughts.

Because Gray was busy thinking happy thoughts, Lucy started her story to fill the silence.

"The only thing we ever really fought over was whether or not we ought to break up. Everything else was a disagreement at worst, but kids… Kids were something we agreed on. We both wanted them. We wanted to exact same amount, and had similar ideas on how to raise them, and were both so excited with the idea that we started trying before Natsu had even saved up enough to propose. Bisca didn't get married until she was pregnant, and Levy was scrambling to get her wedding put together before she was too big to fit in a dress, so there wasn't a lot of pressure to get married first. We could elope at any time if we felt like it, but a baby would take months, so we were eager to get started on that."

Gray took another sip to push back thoughts of how Natsu was probably using him to get a baby, since he wanted one so bad.

Oblivious to Gray's thoughts, Lucy rested her head back on the top of her chair, almost perpendicular to the floor, and placed her hands over her stomach. "But months and months went by of us trying, and nothing happened. Sometimes I would be late and he would comment on my scent changing and we would get excited, but nothing ever came of it. Finally, we went to see a specialist.

"Technically I'm not barren. But my body… There was some damage when we fought Tartaros, so it doesn't react right when I conceive. I can't support a pregnancy, and every time one started, I would miscarry in only a week or two. I didn't even realize. It felt like a bad period.

"We were both distraught when we heard. I couldn't have children of my own. Not ever. Suddenly, all those conversations we had about whose nose and eyes and hair we hoped our baby had felt like a cruel joke, and we stopped talking about it. Natsu came home one day with a list of places where we could adopt, but when I saw them, I felt like a failure. Even if Natsu said it was fine and we didn't have to have our own, I remember going through pictures of children after he left for the day and thinking about how none of them had his eyes and chin and my hair and nose like he said he hoped our child would. None of them looked like him at all. The only baby was born blind, and I'm sure she's a precious little girl, but Natsu wanted someone he would be able to train to fight and bond with taking jobs, and we couldn't take a blind girl into battle. He wanted a baby that he could see through every stage of life, but the only baby wasn't his dream child. After all that time we spent talking about it and how excited he'd been, I felt like I was forcing him to settle.

"I told him that night that we were through. I just couldn't stand to think about it. How he could still have the baby he wanted, but only if it was with some other girl. We fought all night. He thought I was being rash, and he was right, but I just couldn't stand it. I started crying again, and he gave up, and that only made me cry harder. Maybe if we talked about it, we could have sorted it out, but we've avoided it ever since. And he has you now."

There was a flash of bitter resentment as Lucy lifted her head to look at Gray again, but it was gone as quickly as it came on. This time, Gray recognized the issue. As far as she knew, he couldn't give Natsu a child either. She'd given him up so he could find someone who could become pregnant, and from her perspective he went and wound up with someone else with whom he would have to settle for adoption.

He could tell her about the pregnancy. Natsu only took such an intense interest in him because of it, and if it wasn't Natsu's son, it was at least his nephew.

But Natsu had been interested in her despite the fact that she couldn't have kids. Interested in her romantically, when he backed away from Gray the moment he realized his interest in stopping the abortion had been mistaken for romantic. Natsu didn't need a biological child. Natsu wanted a child, but he'd cared more about his relationship with Lucy than with having a child of his own.

Which meant that as much as Gray hated to admit it, Natsu had likely seen the pregnancy, his obtaining a child, and his relationship with Gray's with regard to the whole affair as separate matters.

"Did you and Natsu talk about children?" Lucy asked. "It seems a little early for that."

"Sort of. Juvia talks about us and children a lot, no matter how much I tell her not to. So the subject comes up."

"Ah." Lucy gave him a sympathetic look. "She didn't follow you here, did she?"

"No." Probably not. She usually tagged along openly, but every now and then she popped up when Gray thought he was alone. "Sorry to intrude. I'm sure it's something you don't like to be reminded of."

"No. It felt nice to tell someone. Just… Well, I… hope you two are happy together."

-o-

Gray made himself a dinner of plain toast when he ran out of hot chocolate, and was stripping down for bed when someone knocked. It was too late to deal with Juvia, and much too late for the cesspool of emotional turmoil that was dealing with Natsu, and Gray was glad that, for once, he had remembered both the lock and the chain over the door.

The lock clicked and the door opened as wide as the chain would allow.

"Gray?" Lyon asked.

Gray rushed over with his pants still on one leg to undo the chain. He'd expected a call from Lyon once Natsu delivered the letter, not this.

"Hey. You're out late," Gray said. "Come in. Are you staying the night?"

"Yeah." Lyon thudded his boots on the balcony to knock off snow before stepping in. "How are you feeling? Natsu didn't want me to hear too much from him, but he made it sound like you weren't doing well."

"I'm holding up," Gray said. "The first couple days after I found out were rough. Really rough. But I'm holding up."

Lyon pulled him into a hug, and Gray offered no resistance.

"What all did Natsu tell you, besides what's in the letter?"

"The details of the accident. Zeref's created the ultimate fertility drug, from the sounds of it. That, and that you haven't been well since you found out."

"Yeah. Well… A lot happened. I can't back out of this without losing my magic. Did Natsu mention that? I only had so long to abort before removing the fetus would also remove my magic."

"He didn't." Lyon pulled away and took Gray's hand, guiding him to the living room.

'Living room' was a nice way of putting it. Gray's apartment was a kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. But it was only him living there and he had no need for two bedrooms, so a Lacrima Vision equipped to play recordings and a couch had been placed in the room instead. Zeref had offered to give Gray an Archive Lacrima that he could use to research pregnancy protocol, but Gray wasn't sure he wanted to look into it. On the one hand, it would be good not to depend on Natsu for information on what he was in for, but on the other it just made him feel sick to read about it for himself.

Sitting Gray down on the couch where he would sleep that night, Lyon said, "You'll have to get the hang of it, I guess."

"The hang of what? Being pregnant?"

"Being a parent."

"I'm not going to be a parent. I'm not ready. There's still a lot I want to do and… And I can handle older kids but I never know what to do with little ones."

"Not ready? Gray, I'm about to be a father too, and we're the same age. How much time do you need."

"We're not the same age. You have seven years on me."

Lyon's cheeks turned pink. "R-right. The island incident."

"I don't suppose you have any bright ideas for how to convince me I'm also already the perfect parent."

"No… Maybe… Get help? Natsu's good with kids, right? Meredy said he gives her plenty of good advice when she comes to see Jellal."

"Natsu is not an option!"

Lyon flinched back at Gray's outburst, eyes wide with surprise. "Sorry? I thought he was already helping."

"Natsu's making amends. It's his fault I'm in this mess."

"I thought it was Zeref's experiment."

"Yeah. But at least he didn't know at the time that it would get me pregnant. Natsu knew I was pregnant months before I did, and he knew I wouldn't want the kid, and he made sure I wouldn't find out until it was too late to do anything."

Except give up his magic. He'd sent a letter to Porlyusica asking, and he had ten more weeks to decide whether or not he was willing to make that sacrifice before the procedure was too high risk for her to perform electively. By Zeref's estimate, the serum would last in his system until mid-August, so even if Gray did wait until the last possible day to safely give up his magic to terminate the pregnancy, he would still be looking at one more pregnancy that he would need to catch in time.

Lyon tugged uncomfortably at the collar of his shirt and said, "That's unfortunate."

"That's an understatement."

"How did Natsu do that anyway? It's your body, isn't it? How could you not notice something as major as a baby growing in it?"

"Drugs. Natsu was acting nice and buddy-buddy with me so he could slip stuff to suppress my symptoms into my drinks."

"Oh." Lyon stared at Gray, face growing blanker and blanker as he processed the explanation, then tightening with anger. "Oh. Do you need me to hit him for you?"

"You're not the first to offer, but no thanks. I can hit him myself." It wasn't that hard to exaggerate how hurt he was to scare Natsu into being nicer, since Natsu kept putting that collar on first thing when he arrived at Gray's.

Lyon hardly looked satisfied with that answer. He dropped down on the couch beside Gray, hunched over and arms crossed. "We're not telling anyone you're pregnant yet, are we? Not if you had to tell me with a sealed letter. So I can't tell anyone about Natsu either. How should I tell Meredy that we're not letting him near our kid?"

Gray didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing.

"And now he's the one making sure you don't have an emotional meltdown over this? Are you sure you're okay?"

"Fine. I already had my meltdown and Jellal was the one to handle it, and Natsu knows that if I have another, I want Jellal for that one too. Besides, I really am doing better. The shock's worn off and… It's more time dependent. I wake up feeling bad physically and it messes with my head, but that usually goes away by noon. Or a few hours after. He makes good comfort food, and I think that he didn't actually do what he did out of malice. He thought he was 'saving the baby' from me, or something."

"People who are willing to go too far in the name of good are twice as dangerous as people who act with malice," Lyon said.

"I don't think he felt good about doing it," Gray said.

It surprised him to realize that he believed the words he said to pacify his friend. Natsu wouldn't submit to the precautions he did if he didn't want to make amends, and he'd sounded sincere when beating himself up over his inability to bring the abortion up without attacking Gray.

Did that mean Natsu was forgiven? Hell no. Not for years after Gray shipped the blasted baby to an overseas orphanage and never saw it again, assuming Gray ever could fully forgive him. What it did mean was that he felt reasonably comfortable that Natsu wasn't about to try anything like his medicine scheme again. At least not while the guilt from his last act was fresh.

Natsu betrayed him, tricked him, denied him the right to control and even basic information about his own life and body. That wasn't something Gray thought he could ever forgive. But despite that, it was no longer just avoidance of Zeref that made Gray open to the idea of giving Natsu a second chance.

-x-

STA: Now you might be asking, Serpent, how can you have a woman who is incapable of birth in a story where a man is pregnant? Can't the serum get Lucy pregnant too?

No. The serum kickstarts stuff, but Gray's magic is what's fueling the ability to not lose the kid, and this ability would be severely impaired if only had a minimal amount of magic. If Lucy's magic couldn't do the same for her, then the serum wouldn't resolve that. (Although if you wanna check chapter two again, Natsu does start to ask about using the serum on other people. He and Lucy have already broken up by that point, but he still tries to ask.)

Some interesting details on adoption, since the number of kids who go unadopted is an oft quoted statistic when abortion is brought up. Most couple looking to adopt take years after starting the process before they get a kid. There's a ton of couples who just give up entirely, and plenty more who would like to adopt, but don't even try.

In short summary, the bureaucracy and financial demands involved are a huge barrier of entry. Couples then tend towards children of their own race, and prefer girls at that. Additionally, many won't consider disabled children, which are a tragically common group to be given up for adoption. Most people also want babies, which is a knock against anyone either not adopted right away, or taken because their birth family wasn't looking after them properly.

So healthy babies (especially white girls) tend to be snatched up by couples looking to adopt—with adoptions often being agreed upon before the child is born. (Generally speaking, healthy babies are given up because the mother knows she doesn't want to be a mother, while disabled babies are given up because the mother didn't want that specific baby when it turned out to be disabled. So healthy babies can be made available for adoption while still in utero.) These most often fall through if the mom changes her mind and decides to keep the kid. But older children and those who are disable or otherwise medically unsound can wait years to find a home, if they ever do. Couples who are willing to take these children can usually get an adoption arranged faster, since the supply and demand are favorable to adopting parents. There are also instances in which disabled children are given to couples who usually would not be allowed to adopt just because the system is glad to find someone who wanted those kids.

Kori no Koibito: Wow. Rude. You didn't even wait to get permission before hugging him? What if he didn't want hugs? Anyway, I hope this cleared some things up with the Lucy situation.

Sqydd: I can't actually respond to this review because I'm not really sure what the point of leaving a review where you have no opinions on ninety percent of the story is...

M.E: Well, realizing he needs be more considerate of Gray's situation is something Natsu has to accomplish during the story. As for the comment with Gray at the end... I guess the idea was that Natsu getting shocked was supposed to stun him out of the fight they were just in. Although is final line was less about thinking it's time to eat and more of an olive branch sort of thing? Like, he wasn't willing to totally forgive Natsu, but he kinda saw that even if Natsu was still messing up, he was trying, so he let something slide a little. Since the thing Natsu mentioned wanting earlier in the chapter (that he thought was realistically attainable-unlike Gray's forgiveness) was cheese.