"Natsu, I have a favor to ask of you."

Natsu had no right to deny any requests from Gray, but he still wanted to. After the past week of being Gray's pretend boyfriend, his nerves were shot. If there was any way that Gray's request could be interpreted as a hint of romantic interest, Natsu would take it that way, and he knew he ought to know better than to think Gray was really interested in him.

"What."

"I want you to burn my clothes."

Natsu looked over at Gray. He was in one of his loosest pair of pants and, for once, had put a shirt on. He still wore his ring, but you could tell where his bump was because the shirt couldn't be pulled over it, and his pants couldn't be pulled all the way up on his hips.

"I'm fine to stage something with you in a closet, if we're planning to get caught," Natsu said, "But there's no one for us to put on a show for right now, and there are less destructive ways to disrobe someone."

Gray's face turned scarlet, and he stuttered over a few words before shouting, "Asshole!"

Only after Gray had slammed his bedroom door did Natsu notice the scent of arousal, and he bit his lip and fought the urge to blush as well. Gray was pregnant, he reminded himself, and his hormones were messing with him. There was no real interest. Gray was pregnant and anyone could have gotten that reaction by putting the idea of sex in his head.

A lot of things had just been in Natsu's head lately. Natsu knew his boundaries and made sure to stick to them, but pretending that he and Gray were in love and done with hiding it whenever they were in public made the lines blur. Now Natsu needed to know the public boundaries, the strict private boundaries, and when they were practicing how to act publicly while in private.

It wasn't real. They were only acting until Gray was confident that Juvia had been firmly dissuaded. When Gray suggested they eat out for lunch, it was only so people could catch them acting like a couple and gossip about it. And the only times Gray kissed him was in defiance when they were at the guild and he overheard someone talking about how much potential he and Juvia had. Natsu knew it was all pretend, and when the two of them were private, did his best to respect Gray's boundaries.

Gray made it hard though. Or rather, being Gray's fake boyfriend in public made it hard. Those coy smiles Gray gave him when trying to convince everyone that they were a thing or the way he would act flustered at restaurants when Natsu flirted was too much. Every hesitant smile Gray gave in the privacy of his home and every time Natsu said something that threw him for a loop and he needed a moment to recollect suddenly felt like a continuation of that public behavior, and Natsu had to remind himself that Gray was only acting.

And now getting aroused! Natsu knew Gray had no control of that, but frankly it was just rude of him to do that after messing with Natsu's head all week.

The idea did cross Natsu's mind that maybe teasing Gray hadn't been the best idea. It probably crossed the boundaries set for when there was no one to pretend to be a couple for, and maybe Gray was as messed up by all the pretending as Natsu was. Maybe. Probably not. Gray still resented him for the pregnancy. He knew exactly how they were supposed to feel about each other. It was just Natsu who kept losing track of where he stood.

Something soft but dense hit Natsu in the back of the head as he ran through these thoughts, nearly knocking him into the cream of mushroom soup he was working on. After recovering his balance, he looked back at Gray, standing angrily near the hallway, then to his own feet, where the floor was littered with shirts.

"What…?"

"Burn them all," Gray ordered. He'd shed the shirt he wore earlier, which Natsu imagined was probably somewhere in the pile.

"Okay. But why?"

Something snapped in Gray, and he shouted, "None of them fit!"

Laughing was not the proper response in this situation, but Natsu couldn't help himself. He grabbed the counter to support himself, while Gray cried out in disgust and stormed back to his room again.

"W-wait! Gray!" Natsu called out between giggles. "Wait. I'm sorry. Come back out!"

"Go home!" Gray shouted from his bedroom.

Natsu looked to the soup, turned the burner down to a simmer, and went into Gray's room.

Gray sat on his bed, sheets swathed around himself so that you almost couldn't see where they fell over his stomach. He'd activated his Archive Lacrima, which was supposed to be in the living room where he couldn't hide in bed with it, and the curtains were drawn.

"Leave," Gray ordered.

Natsu ignored him and walked across the room to pull the curtains open, letting natural light back in. Gray only glared in response.

"You know you're gonna go back to your original size, right?" Natsu said. "Those shirts will fit again in a few months."

"That's a long way away. They'll be too old by then."

"You're more than halfway done. Just a few… Too old? What are you? A fashionista?"

Gray rolled his eyes. "No. Clothes don't last that long."

"Yes they do."

"Since when?"

"Since we started making them out of fabric and not banana peels. You don't seriously thing those shirts will go bad before you can wear them again, do you?"

"Uh, yeah."

"No! Clothes don't do that!" Natsu grabbed the edge of his vest and held it out. "This is two years old! I've had this scarf since I was a kid."

"The scarf came from—"

"There is nothing special that keeps the scarf from spoiling. Clothes don't expire after a few months, Gray. They just get worn down when you wear them a lot. We can put your shirts in a box in the closet and they'll still be there for you next fall."

Gray deactivated the Archive Lacrima, giving Natsu a wary look as he asked, "If that's true, why do you have to replace them so fast?"

"I don't. You leave your clothes everywhere you go. That's why you're constantly replacing them."

Natsu expected Gray to fire back with some insult. Instead, he teared up. Completely unprepared for this, Natsu stood awkwardly over him, hand raised as if he meant to put it on Gray's shoulder, unsure what level of consolation it was appropriate to offer a fake boyfriend.

Seeing the hand, Gray tried to swallow back his sobs, but the kept coming.

Finally, Natsu had heard enough, and where the boundary was stopped mattering. If he put his hand somewhere he wasn't supposed to, Gray could just bite it off. He placed his hand on the back of Gray's head and bent over to rest his forehead on Gray's.

"It's okay."

Gray lowered his head. "Y-you think I'm s-stupid."

"I… say stupid things all the time."

"She'd be s-s-smarter if she had y-your brains."

"Well, obviously. But let's hope she gets your common sense."

This was the second time they had this conversation, and it still felt surreal to Natsu. After months of being told that the baby would end up in an overseas orphanage, the idea that he and Gray might banter over which parts of them the girl would take after was a strange thing. Not one Natsu minded, but one he knew would get his hopes up for nothing.

"Enough about her brain," Natsu said.

What he meant by that was that Gray could stop worrying about his own intelligence. Even if Natsu fully intended to tease him some months down the road for his clothing failure, there was no need to let Gray beat himself up over it when he was clearly having an unusually emotional day.

Gray took the line differently.

"I want her to h-have your hair."

Natsu froze, not raising his forehead with Gray's when Gray tried to look back up at him.

His hair?

They'd joked a bit about her brains the other day, sure, but Natsu thought it was just joking about the trouble Zeref could get into. He didn't think Gray really, actually, legitimately wanted the man who forced him to go through with the pregnancy, the man who he had repeatedly said would never be allowed anywhere near the baby that he didn't want near him either, to be the father.

"Natsu…?"

"I…"

Gray shoved Natsu back without warning and scurried backwards in bed, cheeks red as he averted his gaze. "N-nevermind. I didn't say anyth-thing. Just… H-hormones. I've b-been off all day."

"Yeah." Natsu had noticed. "I'll finish making lunch, okay? You take a little time to yourself, and I'll let you know when the food's ready."

Natsu made it out of the room and shut the door before his legs gave out beneath him. Mind going back to that touch, he put a hand to his forehead, and hoped he hadn't made a mistake in opening those curtains. Hoped Gray hadn't seen him blush. There were boundaries that couldn't be crossed, and actually wanting Gray was one of them

Pushing unsteadily to his feet, Natsu hurried back to the stove to try and focus on the soup, but his mind kept going elsewhere. The way Gray blushed and looked away. He was only embarrassed because his mood swings had gotten the better of him, but it was so much like when Natsu suggested at a café the day before that Gray's eyes were prettier than any ice sculpture he could make. It was said as a joke, mostly. Gray did have nice eyes, but his talent for creation exceeded that, and after Gray was done feigning embarrassment, he'd stubbornly accused Natsu of deriding his artistic talent. Natsu was floundering around with the fake boyfriend thing, unsure how much to treat Gray like always, how much to treat him special, and what special even looked like after he thought he'd made Lucy feel that was only to learn how wrong he was.

Natsu tried to be flattering, teasing, romantic, flirty, and sometimes even lewd all at once, while Gray could perfectly put on that stubborn, embarrassed, not wholly open yet still receptive act that seemed like such a natural progression of his usual more reserved behavior into the realm of romantic engagements. Natsu was jealous. The way Gray acted with him in public looked so sincere that he would almost mistake it for the real thing, if Gray hadn't told him it was an act.

His stomach did a flip, thinking of that. Gray wasn't a good match for him. Not if they couldn't agree on kids. He'd known that for some time. But he wanted Gray to be a good match. Even if he was the absolute last person Gray would go for, he wished he had another chance.

If only there had been some way to save the girl without having to betray Gray. If only Natsu had been the one to fall into that pond instead. He could have confided in Gray about it—since there was no way he could tell Lucy first when she didn't think he really loved her and would assume that him being pregnant meant everything between them was fine. He could have confided in Gray, and then let Gray have his laugh before relying on him to find the nerve to tell everyone else. Any maybe, in the meantime, they could have had something.

Wishful thinking. Gray didn't want a baby. Why would he take Natsu if it meant taking Natsu's kid? Especially since Natsu would have ended up having both children that serum would set him up with.

Actually, horrible scenario. There was a fifty percent chance Zeref was the dad, and that would hold true even if Natsu was the pregnant one. Having children with his brother would absolutely not be okay.

-o-

The soup was a mistake. Gray ate next to nothing of it, prodding with his spoon and regarding the bowl blandly. He was going so egregiously slow that Natsu felt he had to take his sweet time on his soup as well.

"If you don't like mushroom soup, you should have said so before I made it."

Gray shook his head. "No appetite today."

"Liar. If I made brownies, you'd eat the whole pan."

Gray gave Natsu a dirty look and defiantly put a spoonful in his mouth, but nearly choked trying to get it down.

There was nothing in the soup that Natsu hadn't fed him before, and at no point had Gray ever indicated any allergies. Natsu waited until Gray had finally swallowed before asking, "Are you alright?"

Gray took another spoonful and had it pressed against his lips before deciding better of it. He set the spoon down, then softly admitted, "I don't feel good."

Natsu tried to keep his voice neutral when he asked, "How so?"

"I don't know. Just… bad. Like how I did after I found out about… you know… all this."

Emotionally unwell. For a moment, Natsu almost melted with relief. He'd been terrified that Gray might admit to some new, dangerous pains. But feeling bad emotionally was still a bad thing, Natsu reminded himself.

"Do you think it's mood swings?" Natsu dared ask, then shoved a spoonful of soup into his mouth as an excuse to not answer right away if Gray exploded.

Gray shrugged. "Maybe. Some of it. It's not like I haven't been a mess lately."

"Do you want comfort food?"

"I don't want to eat at all."

"You still should."

"Or what? You'll force feed me with a funnel?"

Natsu froze in the middle of lifting his spoon, and a mushroom slid out and back into the bowl, making droplets of soup splatter around it.

"What… Where did you get an idea like that from?"

"Jellal." Gray paused there, looking back down at his soup before it occurred to him that this was an unsatisfactory explanation. "That's what he said he would do if I didn't eat right after I found out about the kid."

"Where did he get an idea like that from?"

"I didn't ask."

"Why did he threaten something like that?" Natsu pressed.

"Because I wouldn't eat, and he said I'd feel even worse if I didn't."

Silence set over them as Natsu contemplated whether or not to tell Gray the same thing. Under Natsu's gaze, Gray looked down in resignation at the soup, and forced himself to swallow another spoonful.

Natsu would have liked to let it go until Gray was ready, not eager to hear if he had a part in Gray's mood, but to leave the issue unaddressed until Gray came around to talking on his own was to risk a backslide back into depression. And besides, Gray had thought it a much bigger gesture than Natsu thought it would be when he listened to all of Gray's concerns before.

"Maybe some of it is mood swings? What would the rest of it be?" Natsu asked.

Gray set his spoon down and folded arms, turning his head to look at the window rather than Natsu while he considered whether or not to answer.

"Gray?"

The answer came out as a whisper. "Everyone's going to find out soon."

"Huh?"

"The pregnancy," Gray said, volume and pitch creeping upward. "None of my clothes fit right anymore. I can't pull my shirts down, and my pants don't come up as high as they should, and I can't leave the pants at home and get away with nothing but boxers because I can't pull those up either. I… I just… Yesterday I heard Elfman commenting on it. How it's weird how long it's been since I even tried to wear a shirt, and how I'm not pulling my pants all the way up. People are noticing and it's only a matter of time before they figure out what happened."

Natsu wanted say it wasn't a big deal. They were all Fairy Tail mages. Gray might have to suffer through a little teasing, but everyone would still support him.

Except to Gray, that was a big deal. It was all he could do to cope with the situation without getting grief for it. And the more people who knew about the baby, the more opinions he would be faced with over what to do about the baby. If the pregnancy remained a secret then they could give the girl to Mavis and say that they gave up on adoption, but Mavis found a child she had to take home with her after accompanying them once. If the truth came out, Gray would face everyone's judgment for giving his daughter away.

"So…" Something to deflect Gray's fear of their judgment and teasing. "How about…" Anything. "How about this: If they find out, we tell them what I did. I shoved you into that pond, and I kept you from finding out you were pregnant until it was too late for you to do anything about it, so it's really all my fault, right? If they know that, then no one can really blame you for wanting to wash your hands of it all, and I don't think they'd tease you for being pregnant if they knew you really didn't want to be."

Gray shook his head.

"No? Why not."

"That would make them wonder why we're together."

"We admit to faking it after people misunderstood why I kept going to see you."

"Right," Gray said. "Faking."

"Is that a problem?" Natsu asked.

"A little."

"Oh! Right." Natsu smacked his forehead. "Juvia. She might think she still has a chance."

Attention still directed to the window, Gray gave a half-nod.

Natsu was at a loss. They could downplay what he did and then say they fell for each other while Natsu came to help Gray with his pregnancy, but he didn't dare suggest that. It wouldn't look good to suggest that the just omit the part where he tricked Gray in order to deliberately stop him from having an abortion, and to say that he fell for Gray while tending to his pregnancy needs… Gray might not have an issue with that excuse, but Natsu did. Natsu did because that sounded to him like it was only a step away from 'I hooked up with him because he's pregnant' and he didn't dare make such a claim when it could get back to Lucy.

"I'll kick the ass of anyone who gives you a hard time," he said instead.

Gray glanced over at him too offer a faint smile, then looked back to the window before asking, "And Lucy?"

Natsu wanted to say his ass kicking offer was all inclusive, but he was kidding himself if he thought he could really hurt her. There were lingering feelings towards her. Wounds that had scabbed over, but still bled when prodded. They didn't end in an explosive fight that he could storm away from and happily wipe her from memory after. She had swept the rug out from under his feet without realizing it, and torn it in a way that there was no repairing in the process, but there had been no malice or hate. Just hurt, and the desire to salvage whatever they could. They'd still been close. So close that before things with Gray heated up, there had been times where Natsu almost forgot they were no longer together.

Dealing with Lucy was too hard. The wound needed to become a scar before he could even think of it properly. Until then, Natsu would rather encase it in a box of gauze and duct-tape it over so nothing could get in or out.

"I'll plug my ears and make loud noises until she goes away."

Gray snorted, then had to cover his mouth with his hand to try and smother laughter that managed to break through his funk.

"That's a horrible plan!"

Natsu grinned and shrugged. "I'll deal with it when I have to. Things always work out in the end."

"They do, huh?"

"Sure. Sometimes it just takes a little longer. I thought you might hate me forever after what happened, and I hated that, but we're back to getting along alright, aren't we?"

"Yeah." Gray smiled in earnest, looking back to Natsu. "We are."

Oh good. Natsu hadn't actually been confident Gray wasn't just being nice for fudge and Juvia buffering. He was glad that line worked out.

"Is there anything else wrong?" Natsu asked. If Gray was going from largest to smallest concerns, there may be something in there that he had his priorities mixed up on.

"Not really."

"No new aches?"

"Still mostly my back. That, and at the rate things are going, I don't think I'll be able to make it all the way to the guild without having to stop and use the bathroom for much longer."

"That's everything?"

"Sometimes your brat keeps me up at night," Gray confessed. Thinking of Makarov, Natsu wondered if Gray meant to use that exact wording. "It's getting harder and harder to ignore when she moves. She's been driving me nuts all day."

Making no effort to look any less than completely engrossed in this idea, Natsu asked, "Is she moving now?"

"Yeah. Keeps jerking around in there. I called Erza to ask if that's normal. Apparently babies can get hiccups before they're even born. Isn't that awful? I have to deal with hers on top of mine."

"Think it's a nutritional deficit?" Natsu asked.

"Is this a lead-in to tell me to finish my soup?"

Natsu grinned. "You're not going to feel good if you don't eat."

"Fine. Fine." Gray picked his spoon back up, hesitating a moment before filling it, then hesitating again.

"It's not that bad," Natsu said.

"It's not. Just… I thought if you're so worried about how I'm doing, I should tell you I already feel a little better. So… Thanks."

-o-

Gray settled in for the afternoon working on copying books into the Archive, which Mavis still expected of him on every last day that he didn't come to the guild. With Gray's promise that he would keep his bedroom curtains open and eat when he was supposed to, Natsu fried hamburgers quickly for Gray to reheat for dinner, then went to do something he hadn't had the chance for since the secret boyfriend rumors first took hold.

He went to see Zeref.

Despite the rain, it was warm enough for Alvarez citizens to resume their annual migration to Magnolia to work on Zeref's tower. After the initial downpour from Gray's rejection—which had required all mages with relevant skills work to reroute water before Magnolia flooded—they had settled into a constant drizzle. It wouldn't be a good year for gardeners with so little sun, but it was light enough rain for most people to go out without concern for getting wet.

Locals and visitors alike wandered the streets. Some with umbrellas, others not bothering. It was no longer too wet for everyone's tastes, but the only dry place was the tower, which Zeref had set an enchantment around to repel rain.

That had been a concern for Natsu ever since the first group of Alvarians arrived two days earlier. The people of Alvarez were used to the idea that they weren't to stand too close to their former emperor, which prevented a lot of potential disasters right there. But sometimes Zeref closed that gap himself when he wanted to explain part of the tower's plans to whoever oversaw construction that day, or an Alvarian might panic and run to him if they caught him about to do something stupid and hurt himself. And once that distance was closed, suddenly Zeref would be surrounded by people who were prone to encouraging his erratic genius, which was never a good thing.

Natsu was relieved to find Zeref not overlooking any construction for the day, but instead holed up in the basement of his lab with a book in his right hand.

"Are they still there?" Zeref asked as Natsu came downstairs.

"Yeah. Have you eaten today?"

"Oh! Food. I forgot."

"Lucky you, I saw that coming." Natsu tossed Zeref a paper-wrapped sandwich he'd grabbed while buying Gray groceries, and Zeref held the book up and caught it between the pages. "Maybe if you read upstairs, you'd notice it getting darker and remember dinner."

"You know I wouldn't," Zeref said, setting the book spine up and unwrapping the sandwich with his right hand as he spoke. "Besides, it's too noisy up there. It will be nice when the tower's done, but every year I regret not telling them to build it somewhere else."

Natsu looked upstairs, trying to get a look at the tower again through the solid walls of the first flood. "It's gonna be done soon?"

It had looked far from finished when Natsu showed up. And with the rate everyone worked at when the workers swapped out completely every couple weeks, he hadn't expected to see it completed for another year or two.

"The parts that matter. That architect who helped with the redesign had a lot of non-functional details that he thought would make the tower less 'ominous', and a myriad of structural support features that took forever. The outer casing is a work in progress thanks to that, but there's only a few parts left that are needed for the S-System. It will be a while still before the full structure is complete, but it should be functional well before the end of summer. Which is good, because we can start testing it in time to know if it's missing anything vital before it's too late to add on."

"Will that be noisy?"

"It might cause some abnormal light patterns. I'm sure the mayor won't mind."

Natsu was sure the mayor would assure Zeref it was no problem. Very few people had complaints to say to Zeref's face. Seeing how it went for Gray when he came to complain about the tower, that was probably wise of everyone.

"Jellal is going to love this," Natsu muttered.

Zeref's hearing wasn't as sharp as Natsu's, but he heard just fine. "I took his experience into account. There's a buffer in place that sections the magic energy the tower stores into multiple compartments, so it shouldn't explode this time. The amount of magic the S-System should need in most cases is paltry compared to the R-System, even for people who are so severely sick or injured that it would take a dozen subjects to spread the ailment enough to cure it. The only reason for the size is because it's easier to fine-tune something for that level of versatility when the pieces are larger."

"That's really the only reason?" Natsu asked.

Zeref shrugged. "I could probably have worked it down to the size of the Eclipse Gate and still been able to expect each part to be placed in proper alignment with minimal difficulty, but I would practically need to restart from scratch."

Jellal, Erza, Erik, and Macbeth had all come to terms with the giant tower that vaguely resembled their hellish childhood looming at the edge of the town and stretching higher and higher each year, so Natsu supposed it worked out in the end. That was still awfully inconsiderate of Zeref, and he's ask Mavis to scold him for it later.

Speaking of Mavis, she had done a remarkable job of cleaning up after the explosion. No doubt Zeref helped, but Natsu knew his brother would have devoted most of his energy to making sure all of his research was recovered. Mavis was the one who would have washed down the walls and painted over all the smoke marks left behind, and was no doubt the one who replaced a lot of the furniture as well.

Her touch had transformed the lab from a shabby old building into a vibrant place. Natsu knew that Zeref didn't care one way or the other about the floral pattern on his couch so long as it was relatively comfortable and, more importantly, large enough to hold him and whatever books he was sorting through, but the details all made the place feel more charming than calling it 'The Black Mage's Lab' did. The whole place seemed cuter, for as cute as you could make a building that Zeref was going to clutter with research. If you ignored the research notes, the weird machines, and the wall lined with rat cages, then it almost looked like somewhere Mavis could live.

Maybe that was the point, Natsu realized. Mavis did have living with Zeref as an end game plan, and he wasn't about to move into town. His lab being trashed might have been a blessing in disguise for her, since it gave her the chance to decorate her future home to her liking.

Natsu's mind was turning over the idea of Mavis making a serious push to become his sister-in-law, but his eyes still stared vacantly at the rats. Zeref followed his gaze, and the faint smile he'd worn when admitting to his laziness in designing the new tower vanished.

"How's Gray?"

"Hn? Oh. Sort of fine?"

"Just sort of?"

"He's upset right now. We're not going to be able to hide that he's pregnant for much longer, and we still don't know what exactly to say. The truth causes us both a lot of… drama. It would cause a lot of drama. But lying about it puts him in a situation he doesn't deserve to be in."

"And that would be…?"

"Everyone on his case about being pregnant, when it's really all my fault," Natsu said. "It's that, or Juvia and Lucy on our cases about how we ended things with them."

Zeref, bless his stunted heart, was much better with concrete analytics than he was emotional matters. "Two people or the whole guild. That sounds like a tough call."

"Well, it's also the whole guild on my case if we tell the truth, but I earned that. If nothing else, I could have at least found a way to make Gray keep the kid without hiding what I was doing from him."

Zeref gave a grunt to let Natsu know he heard. By this point, they'd given up on actually discussing the subject of abortion with one another unless it involved trying to actively talk the other down from something. They had enough between them already without making a fight of anything else.

"Anyway, Juvia's really clung to Gray, and he's dead-set on getting her to move on. If she learns he lied about us being a thing, she might not believe him when he finds someone he's serious about. And Lucy… Lucy's going to hate it either way when she learns Gray's pregnant, but we'll both hate it if she thinks that Gray and I got together because he's pregnant."

"Didn't you?"

"Not like that."

Zeref shrugged and took a bite of his sandwich. Matters of the heart weren't his forte, and he would take the emotionally driven Natsu's word for it that there was more to the situation than he could understand.

"Thash de onwy ishoo?"

"It's a big issue!"

Zeref swallowed "But he's not in any pain?"

Natsu paused, needing a moment to realize what Zeref was talking about.

"Not that he felt was worth mentioning. And I really pried."

"You should just tell him."

"He doesn't want to know."

"Well, he's an idiot then, and let's hope that baby inherited his brains, because I don't think the world could tolerate another person like either of us. But do keep trying to talk to him about it. He ought to know."

Natsu glanced at the rats again, all of which looked fine to him at the moment, despite the smell of blood in the basement. They were… well… rats. And the issue Zeref found once he started testing on them hadn't been a problem with any of the egg laying species he put in the pond, so there was no guarantee it would be a problem for humans. But he wished that Zeref had started testing with mammals sooner.

He felt something brush his arm, and looked down to see Zeref offering up half of his sandwich with his right hand. "You look like you're going to be sick. Did you forget to eat too?"

"No. He hasn't noticed anything yet, but I keep worrying…"

"Even if he does, it won't be a serious threat until labor starts. So far, every specimen I helped through that survived. I'm getting better at achieving recovery with them too."

"Right." Not the most confident instilling thing ever, but Natsu appreciated the effort.

There was no guarantee that all live births posed the same problem the rats did, and even then, most of the male rats managed just fine, but hearing that there were significantly more childbirth death from them than any egg laying creature Zeref had included in his pond population still made him anxious. If Gray started to show any signs that he might have the same problem, Natsu would insist on sticking to him like glue—even sharing a bed with him—to make sure that they could react immediately when labor came. With everything else Gray had done (or, more often, not done) in response to the pregnancy, he didn't trust Gray to mention immediately when he felt contractions. More likely was for Gray to go into denial until his water broke.

He hadn't shown signs of anything amiss yet, but Natsu was going to watch like a hawk regardless of what Gray thought of it. He was the one who caused Gray to be exposed to the serum in the first place, and he was the one who stopped Gray from having an abortion. He wouldn't be the one who caused Gray to die giving birth.

"Don't look so grim," Zeref said. "Porlyusica tells me he already agreed to a c-section."

"He could still be hurt if… When did you speak to Porlyusica?"

"Yesterday." Zeref rolled his left sleeve up to reveal a bandage from shoulder to elbow that was a bloody brown and overdue for a change. "I scratched myself on some exposed wire."

Natsu would hazard to guess that Zeref's arm as less scratched and more gouged, and those wired had probably been thick cables, but it was nice to know that the bloody smell was from his brother being careless again and not any dead rats. Sort of.

"Does that hurt?"

"Only when I move it or hold it still too long."

"Do you have pain medicine?"

Zeref's eyes lit up. "I do! But it would make me tired, wouldn't it? I'll take it once the workers are gone, in case they have any questions for me before then. Thank you for reminding me. I hardly had any sleep last night. My arm kept me up the entire time."

"Yeah." Natsu mentally gave himself a pat on the back for having made Gray dinner in advance, because he could tell he was going to be a while with Zeref. "Put the book down and finish your sandwich. That won't heal if you don't eat. I'm going to go get bandages. Did Mavis restock after the smoke?"

Zeref nodded. He took another bite, but as he did, his attention drifted back to the book.

Natsu snatched the book from Zeref's hands. "Eat. I'll be right back."

"I can multitask."

"Were you reading while walking when you cut your arm?"

Natsu took Zeref's silence as a yes.

"You can have the book back once your sandwich is gone," Natsu said. "I'm going to get fresh bandages and make sure your cut isn't infected. If you die, I die. So humor me, alright?"

Rather than give voice to his grudging agreement, Zeref put another bite of sandwich in his mouth. Satisfied, Natsu took the book with him upstairs to check the closet for first aid supplies.

Zeref had an injury that whole time, and he didn't even noticed. He would need to be twice as vigilant with these things in the future.

-x-

STA: I forgot what my Zeref was like. I like my Zeref better than Mashima's.

StuffyJinx: Yeah, tbh I have no idea how rare or common any hair color is in the setting. Even if you say that either pink or black is more recessive, that Natsu has pink and Zeref has black hair means that whichever color is the recessive one, there's no reason either of them couldn't have a child with that hair color. A pink haired baby, in theory, could be Zeref's.

maru84: I have a strict no spoilers policy (that I totally break when I get mixed up with which chapter I'm writing vs which I've posted) so I can't really tell you whether or not I'm gonna crush your hopes and dreams, sorry.

Kori no Koibito: I am never sure if I'm bashing Juvia or just... writing her the way Mashima would, but I feel a little guilty for how Lucy comes off in this fic. But what a way for a silly rumor to make the rounds, huh?

chika aono: I'd believe there's a little repetition. This is one of my less planned out fics in a while (general sense of key plot points, but kinda meandered my way from point to point) so I would have been less on the ball about making sure everything's conscise.