Natsu had to buy his own large umbrella. If he took them from restaurant decks all the time, he'd get caught sooner or later. And he needed one for Gray, because Gray was so afraid people would see his stomach, and Natsu wanted to make sure that he still got up and out and about. He was finally back to getting out of his apartment when the rain came, and Natsu was determined not to let him backslide.
They had settled into a good rhythm. Gray wasn't as on top of things as he'd been before the pregnancy, but he was so much better than right after he learned. He ate without prompting. He was up with the sun and didn't go back to bed until the sun went down. He came outside. He talked to all his friend again. He even managed new developments in his pregnancy relatively well.
But he'd been very clear about not wanting to test how well he handled pregnancy developments that no one thought were good news, so Natsu kept the contents of the letter to himself. It was only a warning, and he could keep watch for the signs on Gray's behalf.
The umbrella did get Gray out more. If Natsu just wanted him to get out in some capacity, then they would go to a café for lunch. If it had been too long since the last socialization, Natsu would badger Gray into accompanying him while he paid a visit to individual guild members, many of whom snickered at the shared umbrella, or were concerned with Gray's health. Laxus had told Mira about running into them at Porlyusica's and how whatever was up with Gray, he needed regular checkups for it. That people had seen Natsu carry Gray home only added to the concern, because now there was a sense that he might be too weak to walk for himself. The vague medical issue excuse Gray gave that half the guild hadn't believed took on new life, and Gray now found himself assuring people that he wasn't in any danger of dying rather than insisting that he really wasn't in perfect health.
And Natsu just smiled.
Because Gray didn't want to know if there were any developments that no one thought were good news.
So Natsu kept the contents of the letter to himself.
They might have carried on like that indefinitely, with Natsu avoiding Juvia and Lucy save for one trip to the guild to take a job, and with Gray tightly controlling who he saw and when. At least until Gray's stomach became obtrusive enough that people would notice even if they couldn't see it.
Gray didn't even need to go to the guild. He had persuaded Mavis that rather than making him shelve books, he could copy them into the Archive, restricted to the access of only his and her lacrima. Mavis vastly preferred the books to the spell, but had to admit that the various tweeks that Zeref kept making to track down key words or better organize files (no doubt done with the intent of organizing his own research) it would be handy to have documents in the Archive. Gray's apartment was between her home and the guild, so she dropped off a new book for him whenever he finished copying one. It was even more mind numbingly boring than keeping the guilld's record room tidy, but it was something he could be paid to do from home, so Gray committed himself to it. That he could commit to work again was also something Natsu was happy to see.
But it couldn't last. Natsu made plans for them to visit Lyon, with Gray spending the day at Lamia Scale while Natsu helped Meredy with little Uriel, but on his way to Gray's apartment, he noticed the churning canal water sloshing over the edges of the sandbag barrier the town had erected for fear of a flood, and resigned himself to a hard sell of taking Gray to see Juvia.
Gray wasn't wrong to say that he shouldn't have to be the one to deal with her. He was just wrong to think that he didn't have to. No one else had managed to sooth her, and it was going on a month straight of rain.
Gray smiled when he first opened the door to let Natsu in, but that smile vanished the moment Natsu said, "We're going to the guild."
Good thing the trip to Lyon's had been planned as a surprise. Natsu didn't want to know how much more upset Gray would be if he'd been looking forward to anything specific that day.
"Absolutely not. Not while she's still like this!" Gray gestured to the rain outside. "For once, there's someone in my life who she can't scare off, and she needs to learn to deal with that."
Someone who she thought was in his life, he meant. Natsu didn't see much point in correcting an obvious word fumble that Gray was probably internally screaming in embarrassment over as if was. Gray would never consider him after what Natsu did, any they both knew what he meant. A little slip of the tongue like that was likely just an accident after so much teasing from guildmates. Gray would never go for him, and Natsu could smile and keep his thoughts on that to himself too.
"The town's gonna flood at this rate. And the market where I buy everything I need for fudge is on the ground flood."
Gray glared. "Not even for fudge."
"If you get her to stop the rain, you can go out without worrying about the rain rolling off your stomach and giving the illusion away. No more umbrella."
Natsu kind of liked sharing an umbrella. But Gray complained about it constantly, so it had seemed like a good offer. The only real effect it had on Gray, however, was to turn his anger into a simmering pout.
Trying one last time, Natsu said, "If the guild floods, then the basement and the records room will get hit first. You're already running on nothing but good will getting Mavis to be as obliging as she is with working for her. Gramps wouldn't have even let you keep the baby a secret. Even if no one's going to blame you for it if Juvia floods the basement, you owe it to those books you can't be bothered to shelve to try and keep them safe."
It was a last ditch effort that Natsu would have considered total nonsense, but it worked. Gray huffed, looked around Natsu to the rain outside, and then said, "Fine. But I want a whole batch of fudge for this."
"What do you need a whole batch at once for?" Natsu asked, genuinely concerned. "You'll make yourself sick."
"No deal then."
Sighing, Natsu held his hands up in surrender. "A whole batch. I'll even mix it so you get four different flavors in each corner. You know I'll have to see Lucy too during this, right?"
Gray looked surprised by the reminder, even though they had been together when Bisca told them that Lucy and Juvia were now commiserates in complaining about Gray and Natsu's relationship.
"Well…" Gray chewed on his lip, thinking of what to say to that. "If she gives you too much grief, I'll give you something to make her stop."
"Like what?"
"Like something I'll regret," Gray said. "Will Erza be there?"
"I don't know. Probably. Why?"
"I need backup in case I do something I regret."
Fair enough. Although why Gray would want Erza—who bought into the silly rumors about them being a couple—over the much more level-headed Jellal, Natsu had no idea.
They passed the time walking to the guild discussing silly things. What flavors of fudge Gray wanted in his special batch. The more Gray stretched his requests, the more Natsu explored his fudge making skills to come up with more impressive bribes, so Gray had an array to pick from. Caramel turtle was a definite go, and orange and maple were settled on not long after. Gray was still pitching the idea of a vinegar flavor that he totally didn't want just because of pregnancy cravings and Natsu wasn't allowed to laugh when they reached the guild.
Natsu was familiar with the sucking in of breaths as people saw them come in, having received the same response every time he showed up since Juvia and especially Lucy returned. What he hadn't expected was for Mira to wave to them and say, "How's the pregnancy coming?"
Gray froze in the door. Natsu tripped over his own feet and stumbled to the floor, and lay sprawled there. The guild burst into laughter, tension so thick that Natsu had nearly suffocated on it during previous visits melting away to nothing.
Rolling onto his back, Natsu saw Gray, pale faced, struggling to come up with words to ask how they knew. Then Laxus came out and placed a hand consolingly on Gray's back.
"Don't mind her. She's just being silly."
"H-how so?" Gray managed to ask.
"The old man's been babbling again," Laxus said. "I think the rain's getting to him. Haven't been able to take him to any of the old places he used to love in this weather, you know?"
Gray nodded, seeming to go paler than he had upon hearing Mira's jab. Neither of them had thought of how anyone else might be affected by the rain that he'd refused to try and address, and Natsu could see the guilt set in thinking of how that might have harmed Makarov.
Evergreen leaned in from a nearby table. "He wouldn't stop asking about your baby all night, Mira says."
"Just nonsense," Laxus grumbled. He was the one who put up with most of Makarov's confusion, and had the lowest tolerance for discussion about it.
His girlfriend, however, best coped with what she saw when she came over to help by sharing it with the world and the most positive spin she could find. "It was cute, in a way. He doesn't usually remember, but we told him quite a bit about you two hooking up. Even read him the article on it. Then all of a sudden, he became convinced you were having a baby."
"Oh," Gray said, looking very small.
It struck Natsu that Gray had only seen Makarov once since New Year's, and that was during a pregnancy checkup. Their secret keeping had robbed Mira and Laxus of the appreciation to be had in Makarov having a more lucid moment.
"Laxus said it's all nonsense—"
"It is!"
"—But you saw him recently, didn't you? I thought he might have been mixed up by you being at Porlyusica's for a checkup, if you mentioned anything about adoption. I'm sure Natsu is begging you to consider it."
"No," Gray said, and said fast enough that Mira mistook it for a suspicious denial and grinned.
If they'd been an actual couple and Gray wasn't pregnant with a baby that he planned to deny Natsu custody of out of spite, Natsu would have been all over Gray begging to adopt a child. The cutest baby in the orphanage, or whichever little boy or girl who was old enough to know their words showed the most spunk. Mira was up on enough relationship gossip to know that Natsu and Lucy had been eager to be parents, even if she didn't know about Lucy's diagnosis, so it was an easy enough guess for her to make.
It was also far from the truth, but Gray seemed to think it was close enough to be worth getting flustered over, because he looked away and mumbled something incoherent.
Well, at least in a fantasy world where Gray didn't resent him for the pregnancy and Natsu actually had a chance with him, and where Natsu could convince Gray not to give the baby up, they now had a solid excuse for where the baby came from, assuming the manage to hide the pregnancy forever.
Too bad that starting their arrival at the guild by making it look like they were quietly looking into adoption would only exacerbate the situation with Juvia. Natsu tried to not even think of how Lucy would react.
Natsu picked himself up off the floor as rumbles about Gray and Natsu as parents made their way around the room. As luck would have it, neither Juvia nor Lucy were there, but Natsu knew they would be. Juvia was a terrible cook, and usually came to the guild to eat, and Lucy would be sure to come for the sake of seeing Juvia, if no one else.
Cana waved to them from a back corner, and Natsu waved back. An out of the way corner wasn't really Natsu's style, but it looked ideal for Gray, if he needed a place to sit any come up with a battle plan. Juvia would immediately detect his presence no matter where he hid, but it at least gave some false sense of obscurity.
Despite having been one of the first to realize that Gray really and truly meant it when he said the engagement was off and he would never marry Juvia, she was among the biggest supporters of Gray and Natsu's alleged relationship. She'd offered a card reading of their romance every time they saw her, and had probably already done one for Mira on the new baby rumor. But then a lot of the guild was pushing Gray towards one romantic pursuit or another that Natsu knew better than to think Gray wanted, and Cana at least wouldn't dwell on it for long.
She still grinned at the two as they approached and held a deck up for them. "Want to hear what your kid'll be like? Mira's taking forever with my beer, so I can give you a quality sober read."
Gray didn't dignify that with a response, which was a shame. Cana's readings were rarely wrong, and Natsu wanted to hear what she thought was to come. Maybe she could get a read on who the father was.
"No? How about one for the how the happy couple's wedding will go?"
"We're not a couple," Gray said.
"Sure. Sure." Cana started shuffling cards.
"Do not give us a couple reading."
"I won't." She shot Natsu a sly grin, then held the deck out for Gray. "Cut it."
"No."
"It's for your health."
"Cut it," Natsu ordered.
Gray looked at Natsu, surprised. Everyone else was free to make whatever misassumptions they wanted with the vague lies Gray fed them and the hijinks they observed, but Natsu knew the exact status of his health. Since Gray was avoiding asking about the letter, Natsu knew what might be cause for concern with Gray's health better than Gray did.
With a forced sigh Gray reached out for the deck, hand hovering a second before he closed to last few centimeters to grab the cards.
He looked tense as he cut the deck into three smaller sections, reodering them and pushing the cards back to Cana, who then placed a hand to draw the first card.
"Gray!"
All eyes went to Juvia, who raced from the door to the back table where Gray sat. He shifted in his seat, looking around for some way to avoid having her grab onto him and potentially feel the baby. Seeing the incoming disaster, Natsu threw his arms around Gray and pulled him into a hug.
Juvia stopped a few feet short at the sight of the gesture, looking confused for a second before saying, "Natsu doesn't wish to be Juvia's love rival, does he?"
Natsu held Gray tighter.
"L-let Gray go," Juvia said. When Natsu continued to ignore her, she looked to Natsu. "Tell him to let go."
Natsu's grip slackened. He'd done his job saving Gray from a pregnancy exposing hug. Now his behavior was counterproductive to making the rain stop.
Gray took one of Natsu's arms and held it in play, swinging his other over Natsu's shoulder. "You have no business telling me what I do with him."
The guild went dead quiet, and Natsu wanted to disappear. Even at his most blunt, Gray still didn't take that tone with Juvia. The worst he ever said to her was no, and only in an plain voice at worst. Too cold, and he'd prompt a rainstorm from her. Did he forget that he came to stop the rain?
Seeing the cold fortitude in Gray's eyes, Natsu swallowed and tried to look equally firm.
Gray wasn't trying to put a stop to the rain. He wanted to put a stop to the mess that lay between him and Juvia.
It took Juvia some time to find her voice. "Gray and Juvia are engaged—"
"Not since I called it off years ago. Four hours doesn't give you the right to ignore every 'no' I tell you for years after, nor do you get to stake a claim on me and scare away anyone else I take an interest in just because you refuse to accept that it didn't work out between us."
"Juvia knows Gray doesn't mean that."
"Juvia doesn't get to decide what Gray thinks for him," Gray said. "I don't want to spend my life with you. And I definitely don't want to spend my life putting up with you not accepting that." He pulled Natsu closer. "I moved on. It's about time you did too."
In the near silence that followed this declaration, Natsu heard Cana muffle a snort and whisper, "Not a couple."
"So," Gray turned his attention back to Natsu, who did not at that moment appreciate being the center of attention, "We were talking about adoptions, weren't we?"
Dear God. How determined was he to shake Juvia?
"J-Juvia… Juvia can be a surrogate. If Gray—"
"No!" Natsu snapped before Gray could. It was one thing to adopt a child who otherwise had no family. Letting his boyfriend get a girl he used to be engaged to pregnant so they could take her kid was well beyond where Natsu drew the line.
Then he remembered that Gray wasn't his boyfriend, whatever Gray said to discourage Juvia. He was just a convenience. Someone who everyone already thought Gray was involved with, and someone who Juvia couldn't run off. Someone who could be used to break her of her habit of blocking every attempt Gray made at finding someone new so that he could go on to find someone new.
And it was fine if Gray used him like that. Even if Natsu had only wanted to save Gray's baby and would never regret succeeding at that, he knew he picked the wrong way to go about it, and he knew Gray felt used and abused. There was no way that what Natsu felt was anywhere near what Gray did when he learned about Natsu's lie. What right did he have to complain if Gray used him a little? He should be glad for the opportunity to help Gray out. To make amends.
"I…" Too much attention. Way too much. Everyone watching him when he and Lucy fought was bad enough, and no one treated him and Lucy as extremely as they did Gray and Juvia. "I don't want a baby that's only Gray's."
To try and look like a proper put-off boyfriend, Natsu gave his best pout face and rested his head on Gray's shoulder, so Gray barely had to whisper the word "Liar" for Natsu to catch it.
He wasn't wrong. Natsu still hoped the kid was Zeref's, and still wanted it for himself more than anything else, save for maybe one person in the room with him. If you were going to have a dangerous father with a long history of destruction either way, you might as well also have a father with brains. Natsu was pretty sure that, had he been the one with Zeref's curse, he would have only done less damage overall by way of not knowing how to give life to his inclinations quite like his brother did.
"Gray?" Juvia asked.
"Sorry. No. I wish you the best of luck with any other men who come into your life, because the man in your life will never be me."
Juvia took a step back, eyes welling up with tears, and a murmur broke out in the guild. Natsu shut his eyes, listening to it all. People who felt Gray was being harsh, or even cruel. People who thought it was about time that he said something final one way or the other on her. People who were in disbelief over the fact that Gray actually meant it all those times that he pushed her away, and confused as to why he still caved and said nice things to her later. People who were still convinced that Gray was only being stubborn.
Another step back, and then Juvia's hand clenched into a fist and she lashed out, a stream of water flying at Natsu.
Tangled up in one another, Natsu didn't have time to react, and Gray could only get one hand up to form a shield. The ice make was weak, and cracked when the water hit it, but didn't give way completely.
An accusation was on Natsu's lips. For Juvia being unable to take Gray's rejection. For attacking a guildmate, even if he knew Juvia had hardly gone all out, and even if guild brawls were a common thing in Fairy Tail. For every spectator who thought badly of Gray for reaching the end of his rope after years of playing along with the obsessions of someone who he couldn't bring himself to love.
But before Natsu could let out any words that would get him in trouble later, Cana threw a card that smashed through Gray's shield and hit Juvia on the forehead.
"A'right!" she shouted, voice taking on a drunken slur that hadn't been there a minute ago. "It's been too long since we had a little fun 'round here."
One of the next three cards she threw hit Juvia again, but the other two hit Elfman and Droy. When Elfman roared and indignation and jumped to his feet, he knocked over Levy, which had Gajeel leaping up to get even.
Gray tightened his grip on Natsu as a brawl broke out, and Natsu gave a genuine pout. He worked as little as possible to stay with Gray as much as he could, and the quickest, highest paying job wasn't always the most fun. He was itching for a fight, but Gray couldn't fight at all. Not with the baby, and not if he wanted to keep presenting the image of someone who was struggling with a secret illness.
"Basement," Gray whispered.
Natsu nodded and checked for Juvia before letting go of Gray and getting up. She was in the thick of the fight, going ferociously at anyone who came close when she normally only got involved in a brawl insofar as to drag Gray out of one if some girl he was fighting got too close for her liking.
Biting his lip, he turned away and pulled Gray towards the basement door. It would be good for her to work off the initial wave of emotions that came with rejection. Natsu himself ha0d needed to run off into the mountains and find things to beat up when he realized how horrible the disconnect between him and Lucy was.
Thinking of Lucy, he spun around to check one last time, and when he didn't see her, opened the basement door and slipped inside with Gray.
To his annoyance, he caught Macao giving him a thumbs up as he shut the door.
-o-
"I can freeze the surface of the canal," Gray offered. "It won't overflow, but water can still run."
Natsu nodded, looking deep in thought as he ran through that solution in his head. Zeref would have pointed out that the entire drainage system for the town involved water running off the streets into the canal, so it would flood either way, but a suggestion that appeased Natsu made Gray feel better.
In theory he could have told Juvia that he and Natsu were fighting, or some other story that would give her hope. He could have even blown Juvia a kiss and said he was only practicing with Natsu on ways to treat her special, but in practice the idea gave Gray goose bumps. He was tired of humoring her whenever the waterworks started, and tired of letting everyone who supported 'them' chew him out for not submitting to her. The longer he dragged things out, the worse it would get, and it had already gone on far too long. He was done.
But Natsu and everyone else, be they sympathetic to his plight or on Juvia's side, wanted the rain to stop. Gray could hear the rain on the roof from the basement.
"Mira's got water magic, so she can send all the water to the lake. And Levy can probably make something that'll give the water another way to get out," Natsu said. "I'm sure it won't flood too bad."
"Yeah… Sorry."
"Don't worry about it," Natsu leaned in, a lewd grin gracing his lips, "boyfriend."
Gray turned his back to Natsu so the fire slayer wouldn't see his blush.
"I know every orphanage within a five day's walk from Magnolia. If we're really looking to adopt—"
"Knock it off," Gray said.
It wasn't totally fair to Natsu to use him as a fake boyfriend like that, but everyone already bought into the relationship anyway, and a lover who was impervious to Juvia's love-rival harassment was a good start for finally breaking things off with her completely. Natsu would still owe him for the whole pregnancy by the time the act was up anyway. And until then, if Gray was going to go along with the rumors, then he had an excuse to push the limits of his relationship with Natsu and get a feel for just how serious a mistake he was making, falling for the idiot a second time.
Maybe it would be a chance to gauge how much Natsu liked him, too. If not, then maybe Gray could talk Erik into feeling Natsu out. Or talk Erza into bullying Jellal into talking Erik into feeling Natsu out. Gray had yet to get Jellal's blessings for his renewed romantic pursuit. Not that he needed Jellal's approval, for as much as it would make him feel less a fool for what he was doing, but the guild's greatest voyeur only reliably did as Jellal asked him, ignoring even Mavis most of the time. If you wanted a favor from Erik, Jellal's cooperation was the best way to get it.
"It's fine," Natsu said. "I felt bad enough last time knowing that I got a bunch of kids hopes up and didn't give a single one of them a home. I wouldn't want to go around asking to see a bunch of orphans I didn't have any intention of adopting."
"Did you ever consider just taking one? You don't need Lucy for that."
"I kinda do," Natsu said.
"Macao went without a wife just fine."
"Yeah, but Macao had Romeo with his wife first. No one takes your kid away just 'cause your wife left you, but there's laws against bringing a kid into a 'broken home'. You can arrange with someone who's gonna give up their kid to take it from them 'cause the government doesn't get involved, but once they're formally abandoned, there's papers you have to go through that you need a spouse for. I'd have to become a citizen in some country that does let you adopt without being married, and they usually require you be live there for a while before you can take a kid. I'd rather find someone from nearby anyway. Not take them too far from their home, y'know?"
The woods where Igneel raised Natsu, Zeref had once revealed, were cut down to set up a mining town two hundred years ago. Gray could see where Natsu was coming from there. On the other hand, Gray hated going back to his birthplace. The ruins of his town and his parents grave made him feel weak inside, and the idea of living even kind of close by made him anxious.
But adoption was off the table for Natsu unless he found someone else who he loved and who loved kids anyway, and in all likelihood that someone would be able to have their own children.
The thought was a sharp pang for Gray. It hadn't occurred to him until just then that he was pursuing someone who desperately wanted to be a parent, while Gray wanted not to be the father of his own daughter.
It really, really, really should have been Natsu who fell into the pond that day. That was before he and Lucy broke up, even, so it could have resolved things before they ever split.
Much to Gray's annoyance, that last thought gave him a sense of relief. Why? Because he wanted Natsu to have his heart broken? Because he thought it was worth the chance to be Natsu's pretend boyfriend, even though he had to be pregnant? Baby oriented as he was, Natsu had probably realized long ago that Gray wasn't his type. That was probably why he was never the one to initiate…
Now Gray was just being silly, but the thought pressed against the front of his mind, and he couldn't open his mouth without it coming out.
"When I kissed you, what did you think of it?" Gray asked.
Natsu considered the question, then said, "Fuck. He was already going to hate me enough for this. Him liking me will make it ten times worse."
The betrayal, he meant. He knew it would hurt Gray, and he realized it would only run deeper when Gray mistook all those seemingly kind gestures for something more.
"Is that why you backed off?" Gray asked, recalling Jellal saying Natsu felt guilty.
"I didn't think I could keep it up," Natsu admitted. "Even to save the kid. Just thinking about how you'd feel when you realized what I was doing…"
Gray didn't try not to sound bitter, because he was. "But you went ahead with it anyway."
"Yeah."
Gray looked back at Natsu. "Why?"
"For the kid," Natsu said. "And just… Jellal came and asked me what I was doing. I don't know if you sent him or what, but he said he heard that I'd been following you around like a second Juvia and wanted to know what my angle was. He was so accusatory about the whole thing and it just made me feel worse. I was going to just stop showing up and let you figure out what was going on, but the way he made me feel, I decided I was doing to tell you upfront and apologize, and just beg you to let the baby live."
"Uh-huh." Sure. That was why Gray could now feel a baby rolling around inside him. Because Natsu came clean and begged Gray to give her a chance.
"Really! But… when I was on my way to see you again it kinda sank in that it was a stupid fantasy, to think you would keep the kid just because I asked. Even though she's my family too, even though the might by my daughter, it wouldn't matter that I wanted her to live. I knew you didn't want to be a parent—you'd already told me that—and I thought it ought to be enough to say that I could take her off your hands once she was born. I'd already hidden the pregnancy from you for weeks and made you think I was doing what I was just because I liked you. You were going to be furious with me no matter when you found out, and you wouldn't let me have her, and since there was no one to take her, I didn't think you would keep her. It was too late not to hurt you, but I thought I could still save her."
He wasn't wrong there. Gray absolutely would have had an abortion the very same day if Natsu told him the truth back then. He might not have felt as betrayed, if only because Natsu would have explained things for himself, and in time for Gray to make his own life choices, but he still would have been bitter over having thought Natsu might like him, only for it to turn out that Natsu just cared about a baby he didn't want.
And here he was, walking right into the same trap.
"If I hadn't been pregnant, and you weren't doing anything underhanded that you felt bad about, would you have kissed me back?" Gray asked.
"No. Because I wouldn't have been at your apartment. We wouldn't have hung out enough that month for you to get away with skipping the guild party to avoid Juvia, and even if we were hanging out, I would have wanted to go to the guild party, and Juvia would have dragged you off then and never let you kiss me. I liked the idea of going to your apartment because it kept you away from alcohol."
"Let's pretend Juvia had the flu and I pulled you into a corner and kissed you here at the guild instead," Gray said. "Would you have kissed me back?"
Natsu looked to the stairs. No one had come down yet, but Juvia had a way of just appearing when Gray was around. "This is dangerous talk."
"I already told her I'm seeing you now and we're going to start a family. Kissing me isn't that big a deal, in comparison."
Natsu looked around for another excuse and, finding none, but a good ten feet between himself and Gray before saying, "You're not allowed to hit me for answering."
"I'm going to hit you if you don't."
"Probably? I mean, I know you and Jellal both would pound me to dust if I did now. I'm not stupid. I blew my chance with you. But you're kinda fun to argue with, and I like having you by my side, and you look nice, and you're a good person even if you didn't want to keep the kid. Except you don't want kids."
You don't want kids… so I wouldn't even kiss you? So I'd be worried about what might come down the road if I decided to go with you? Natsu could have a casual affair with a woman where he took over with any children they had if she didn't want them, but with a man, they had to be a solid, married couple. That, or they had to be willing to move to another country so Natsu could adopt outside of Fiore.
Natsu said he blew his chance with Gray, but Gray was beginning to think he never had much of a chance with Natsu to begin with.
"Why all this now?" Natsu asked.
"Because we have to play couple until Juvia gives up completely," Gray said. "If I have to make out with you in public for that, I want to know exactly what's going through your head this time."
Natsu made a face at that.
"Look at it this way. You get to prove to Lucy you don't need someone who can give you a baby anyway."
"Until she finds out your pregnant. And if the baby has pink hair, that would only make it worse."
The words were like a knife to the heart. Gray wanted Natsu to be the father.
"You were just going off a minute ago about how she could be your daughter."
"Yeah. And I already love her. But as far as things with Lucy goes, her looking like me would only cause trouble."
Gray stared at Natsu, trying to fathom the idea of loving someone you'd never even met. Never even heard about. He was no stranger to the concept of unconditional love, but he always thought there was an asterisks there and some fine print explaining that it came under the condition that the person you loved had at least been born.
But this was normal, wasn't it? Meredy and Lyon talked at length about all their hopes for Uriel and how excited they were to meet him. Jellal and Erza still hadn't settled on a name, but they lit up whenever asked about their child. People who actually wanted their children fell for them, or at least the idea of them, well before getting to see them for the first time.
For the hundredth time, Gray regretted that Natsu hadn't been the one to fall into the pond. Not because Gray didn't want to be the one who was pregnant, but because it seemed like a shame that Natsu didn't get to be as intimately connected to the kid as Gray had to be.
"Anyway," Natsu said, oblivious to Gray's pity, "Zeref would make a better father. I mean, not a father figure, but he's smarter than me."
Gray shook himself out of his thoughts. "Zeref could stand to be a little less smart. The thing he's best at inventing is new ways to get himself and others into trouble. I'd rather the kid have my brains."
Natsu grinned, eyes alight with glee. "If you don't want him to be a super genius, you should at least hope he gets his smarts from me so he's not a total idiot."
"Hey! Who are you calling an idiot!"
"Think about it. Who's family is smarter on average?"
"Who's family has caused less trouble on average?" Gray countered.
Natsu laughed, pure and mirthful in a way Gray hadn't heard in far too long, and it was such a sweet sound that Gray didn't even care that he let himself get roped into talking about what he hoped the baby was like. This was a welcome change from all those unsettling looks of concern Natsu gave him as of late. Like he was about to slip back into the deepest depths of depression again.
Gray laughed along with Natsu, forgetting about the baby entirely. Forgetting about the rain. Juvia. The way Natsu had been overeager to have Cana do a reading on his health. That he was falling for someone he already made the mistake of loving once, who wanted something different from life than he did. For one blissful moment, Gray let himself forget about it all.
-x-
STA: Jesus fuck I was proofreading this and found notes and extra dialogue and couldn't remember if I moved on from this chapter without finishing it or if those were just reminders for things to add in wherever it best fit. It looks like some variant of the conversation comes up in chapter 27, so I guess it's the latter? Had a moment of panic there thinking I would have to write another scene for this story when I still need to reread everything after it and get back on track with this fic. Winter classes totally messed me up with keeping track of all this.
andy24amk: Heck if I know, man. There's gonna be more than 35 and probably not a whole lot beyond that, but I stopped planning out stories with specific chapter counts a while ago. If I ever have an exact number to provide now, it means I finished writing and just have stuff I haven't gotten around to posting yet.
Stuffjinx: Natsu really hopes for that as well.
ichika aono: Tbh I've forgotten what each successive chapter is about. I need to go back and reread the rest of what I have so I can get the ending written.
Kori no Koibito: Never had a loved one with dementia (thank god) but all my work experience is in elder care and I used to do long term exclusively, so you get to see a lot of people who you take care of just decline physically and mentally over the course of weeks and months. The people with early stage dementia are usually pretty with it still, but I just felt bad for the ones whose conditions had progressed. They knew they didn't know much of anything when that hadn't always been the case and couldn't figure out why they were like that. I'd hate to live that way.
: This chapter is what's happening with Juvia so... yeah. As for Jellal, I guess I was going for more of that "it's easier to forgive someone who wronged you than it is someone who wronged your loved ones" thing.