STA: PSA to anyone who has a period in their username. ffn keeps thinking I'm trying to slip a URL into the story when I put your name in the review replies. If there was ever a time you reviewed a chapter and there's kinda just nothing where your name ought to be when I posted the reply after the author's notes, that's why.

-x-

By day three of bed rest, Natsu was practically begging Gray to stay put.

"You're going to hurt yourself," he kept saying when Gray tried to get up from the couch.

To which Gray would always reply, "Easy enough for you to say. You can still move around. Why don't you try staying put for once?"

Natsu almost missed the time when Gray was so depressed he didn't so much as roll over in bed unless shoved.

If he could, he would trade places with Gray. Hell, if there had been a way to take the pregnancy on for him from day one, Natsu would have offered. He didn't think he'd fare any better on bed rest. In fact, he was confident he'd be stir crazy to the point of insanity in a matter of hours. But maybe he would have avoided the same damage Gray ended up with, since Zeref thought it happened less than half the time. And either way, he felt bad seeing Gray stuck in bed over a choice Natsu made for him.

But he'd feel even worse if Gray suffered any permanent damage, so he had to be strict with Gray about following the doctor's orders. Gray behaved himself when Porlyusica came in for checkups, but the moment she was gone, he became restless.

"I'll ask the old lady to move in with us until you're all better if you keep this up," Natsu threatened the next time he saw Gray trying to get up.

"I need to pee."

"You peed ten minutes ago."

"I'm kind of pregnant, Natsu. Your kid pushed all the rest of my organs out of the way. There's not a whole lot of room right now for my bladder."

"You could hold it more than ten minutes four days ago."

Gray threw a pen at Natsu. When Natsu picked it up, he folded his arms over his chest and said, "Give that back."

"Seriously?"

"I'm stuck on the couch, Natsu. There isn't a whole lot I can do to entertain myself."

"The offer to transfer you to the guild still stands. Everyone else could help keep you entertained."

"Everyone else didn't make me pregnant. You're here nonstop now anyway. Maybe you could do more to keep me from dying of boredom."

He'd already forgotten about the bathroom, Natsu noted.

"I brought you more sketchpads, and all the guild work for Mavis that you're not doing. I can see if anyone has board games I can borrow, but other than that I'm not sure how you expect me to entertain you in bed."

Natsu was aware of that unfortunate wording as soon as it left his lips, but he hoped Gray hadn't picked up on it.

"How much activity do you think is safe lying down?" Gray asked. "Erza said it's not supposed to be an issue if your pregnant, but that's for a normal pregnancy. I mean, I didn't ask her, but she and Jellal must have wrapped up just before I visited them. Do you think it would be okay as long as I don't put any weight on my hips?"

Natsu averted eye contact. "I think it would be hard to find a comfortable position. But… Um… Sorry. If I hadn't gotten you involved in this…"

"Nah. I mean, fuck you for the pregnancy, but it's mostly Juvia behind the majority of the time that I haven't been able to get laid. You?"

"Not since Lucy and I broke up. My reclusive brother gets more action than me now," Natsu admitted.

It was a perfectly reasonable response, and one that should have pleased Gray, since it meant Natsu had been celibate the entire time they'd been in close contact. Instead, Gray's face fell.

"What? Was I not supposed to mention that? Sorry. I forgot you walked in on him."

"No… just… I guess it makes sense. Lucy said you two nearly had kids a couple times, and you were dating for a while, so you would have slept with her. I was just hoping you would have a little less experience."

It took Natsu a second to work out why someone who was attracted to him might want someone who didn't know what they were doing in bed. He looked back at Gray, studying him closely before risking asking such an uncomfortable question.

"Do you… not have that much?"

"O-of course I do," Gray said. "I looked good before you and this kid came along. You think no one would want me?"

No. But Natsu could see no one wanting to risk Juvia's wrath, and Gray hadn't been as warm to others for more than a few months prior to Juvia joining, so there was a very good chance that no one had approached him before Juvia was there to chase away competition.

Asking if Gray was a pregnant virgin was bolder than Natsu dared be, so instead he said, "You still look good."

"Liar. I'm fat."

"You're pregnant."

"I'm fat and pregnant, which is twice as bad."

"You're not fat, Gray."

"Am too. You told me yourself that I had to pay more attention to how much weight I put on."

"Okay. Fine. Maybe you gained a few pounds more than you're supposed to. It'll come off soon enough once you can be up and active again, and you weren't fat in the first place, so it's not a huge deal anyway."

"Easy for you to say. You're not the fat and pregnant one."

Mood swings were funnier when Jellal was recounting all the trouble Erza's gave him. Natsu wanted Gray to go back to fidgeting and using the bathroom out of boredom every three minutes.

"You are not fat, okay? And you still look good to anyone who think that pregnancy doesn't look like some sort of body horror mutation. You look good, okay? You look attractive still. If you weren't on bed rest with damaged hips, I'd have no issue fucking you." It took Natsu a second to hastily add, "If we were together! I-I'm not… That is… Since I'm just here for your health… I'm not coming on to you, I swear."

Gray stared at Natsu, eyes wide, cheeks scarlet, jaw slack, and said nothing.

"Um… Just… forget I said anything. A-anyway… board games! I bet Bisca and Alzack have a bunch still. Asuka was into them for a while. If you're bored, I can ask to borrow one. I already told everyone that your rings aren't working and you're tired all the time anyway, so you're staying at home until the baby's born. They'll totally get it if I say you need some stuff to pass the time."

"Um…"

"O-or maybe I can run and buy one now?"

Anything to escape the situation.

"I… uh…" Gray met Natsu's gaze, then they both quickly looked away. "Before Juvia… I wasn't really looking that seriously for someone and… Um…. We were going to… in her room… but it kinda killed the mood to see my face on all the décor and then… we weren't together… and no one else gave me a second date with her hanging around so… I… might not have… much experience."

"Mm." Natsu stared as intently as he could at the wall to the right of Gray. "Sorry about that. With the baby too. Um… Juvia seems to be on board with the whole still being friends thing, so… you should have better luck now."

Gray took a deep breath in and out, and in his peripheral vision, Natsu could see Gray look right at him. "Juvia said I need to be bolder."

"That's good advice." In moderation, Natsu thought. Juvia took her own advice far too far, but Gray was way off at the opposite extreme.

"So would you give me some hands on pointers?"

Natsu's brain shortwired, and he found himself staring blankly at the wall.

"Natsu? N-Natsu? I… Shit. Forget I asked, okay? Just… Zeref said… I thought… Forget everything. Everything. This conversation didn't happen, got it?"

Zeref said…

Zeref…

Zeref told Gray that Natsu wasn't entirely opposed to the idea of them getting together? That had been shared in confidence! Granted, most of that confidence was Natsu being confident that Zeref only had Mavis to share information with, and that Mavis would know better than to blab about who liked who, but still!

"I'm never talking to Zeref again," Natsu said to himself.

"Okay. Cool. Are we still talking? Please tell me we're still talking. You don't have to sleep with me, but I really don't want to have to go to anyone else for help while I'm stuck in bed."

"I… um…" Natsu looked to the door, which wasn't too far away. He could make a run for it again, but he didn't really have that luxury this time. Gray needed someone with him to help during bed rest, and Happy left on a job with Gajeel and Pantherlily the day before.

"Natsu?"

Natsu looked back to Gray, who was biting his lip with worry, skin paler than normal. His eyes had already glassed over, and Natsu making a run for it for a third time post confession had no doubt crossed his mind as well.

"I… don't think that's a good idea for you to sleep with anyone right now," Natsu said, trying to keep his voice neutral. It kept jumping up in pitch no matter how hard he focused on speaking slowly and evenly. "With the injury and all… You can ask Porlyusica tomorrow if it's safe."

Gray was still pale, and his eyes still glassy, but his jaw set in a firm line and his gaze hardened. "Are you trying to avoid saying no outright? I asked you outright. I think I deserve an outright rejection."

"I… Look… I…" Natsu looked away. "I think—"

"Eyes on me."

Forcing himself to look back, Natsu said, "I like you… but you could do better."

"The only reason I'm not kicking your ass as hard as Erza did when Jellal told her that is because I'm stuck in bed."

"Literally everyone else on the planet hasn't drugged you," Natsu said. "And besides… even if I did it because I wanted the baby to live… I do want a kid, Gray. And you don't. So… I don't think it would work. I like you. A lot. But I don't think it would work."

"I know," Gray said. "Zeref told me."

"He—"

"So if we made that work anyway, would you have me?"

Yes. But Gray had already laughed off Natsu's idea for how it might work.

"Natsu?"

"That's the main problem," Natsu admitted. "That and that you could do better."

Natsu would feel as lousy accepting Gray as he would rejecting him. Why, of all the people in the world, did Gray have to keep falling for him? This had to be how Jellal felt, and Jellal at least had the excuse that someone made him hurt Erza. It didn't matter if Natsu let himself have Gray or if he rejected Gray's feelings again. Either way, Gray deserved better after what Natsu put him through.

"I…" Gray looked to his stack of sketchpads. The ones that Natsu wasn't allowed to touch that he knew weren't full. "I've been working on something with Mavis. With the baby. I'm not bribing you or anything. You can do this whether you want to be with me or not. She's not really… If you two hadn't been fighting, I might have asked Lucy to take the girl instead, because I think Mavis feels like it's a little early for her to be a parent too. A-anyway, Mavis is going to need help. So I said it would be okay if, maybe, you took the baby for a few days in the week," Gray said. "Mavis thought she'd like to have her over the weekends when she doesn't get as much paperwork to sort through, so she can focus more on parent things, and there were a couple days where she thought that she could work from the lab and make sure Zeref looks after her properly. It ended up being Tuesday and Wednesday they decided were busiest. I guess because the Council usually spends all of Monday figuring out what work to dump on the guild masters? So on those days, if you wanted, they'd be happy if she could stay with you."

Natsu was pretty sure he could feel his jaw hanging down, but he wasn't able to process much, mind stuck on the idea that Gray was not only acknowledging aloud that he would have some level of involvement in his daughters life when, previously, he wasn't supposed to babysit if she would even stay in town with them. Joint parenting. Gray was suggesting joint parenting with Mavis.

"I mean… we still don't know if you or Zeref is the dad anyway, and from the way Mavis was planning to manage things, it sounds like the baby will be spending two nights at the lab if you go with this, or four if you don't. So it's kind of like splitting her between her possible dads. Unless she comes out with pink hair. But pink's kind of recessive, so I don't think we're going to get lucky and see any really obvious signs of who the dad actually is."

Joint parenting. Gray actually letting him have the kid, even in some small capacity. But in a way where he could be a significant part of her life as she grew up, and not just for a few years before she was old enough to be trusted on her own while her parents were busy, at which point Natsu would become one more face at the guild where her mom worked.

"Well? Don't just stand there. It was your idea first. You wouldn't have her for most of the week, but—"

"But I'm lucky to have her at all."

Gray glanced away and gave a grunt in affirmation. "That's not exactly what I planned on saying."

"You said it plenty before. I… Yeah. I'd like that. Thank you."

"What I was going to say," Gray said, and he had to stop there to draw in a deep breath and, Natsu suspected, remind himself of that bold moved advice, "is that it gave you more time to spend with me. Doing normal couple things, I mean. Not this." He gestured to the setup they had put together so he could reach everything he might need without having to get up from the couch. "Like what we were doing before, only not just for show, and when I'm not pregnant."

Going out with Gray. Going out with Gray for real. Natsu shoved the baby to the back of his mind to be excited about later. He'd already run away from Gray's feelings twice, and put the baby before him once in a very major way. Gray deserved to have his undivided attention for this.

"Yeah," Natsu said. "I'd like to try and make us work."

"Even if you don't think we can pull it… Wait… Really?" Gray paused in the middle of pushing himself up to protest. "You'll go out with me?"

"Why not? I like you," Natsu said, reaching over to press Gray back down against the couch. "If there's a way to make us being together possible, I want to try it."

"You won't go back on—"

Natsu pressed his lips to Gray, cutting off any doubts as best he could. They had kissed a few dozen times before, but be it for show or a confession, it was always at Gray's discretion. It felt good to be the one to initiate a real kiss for once. Natsu hadn't realized how badly he'd wanted to make a call with Gray—one that he knew Gray wanted—until he did it.

Gray tugged with his teeth at Natsu's lips as he pulled away, not ready to part yet, but it wouldn't be good for either of them to go too long without air.

"Okay." Gray's words came out breathless. "Go ask Porlyusica how much it's safe to do in bed while I'm on bed rest. Now."

"Excuse me?" Natsu smirked. "I require at least three dates first."

"You're just saying that to buy time until the baby's out. We've been on at least three dates."

"Real dates. Where I'm not wondering how much of it is you liking me but wanting me to think it's an act, and how much is you wanting people to think you like me."

"Goddammit, Natsu. Let me have this."

"Three dates. I'll pay for them," Natsu insisted. "Besides, you weren't the one around Gajeel and Levy all the time when she was pregnant. I might not have a lot of hands on experience here, but I can still take a lesson from what others went through. It's easier when you're not pregnant. We should make your first time a rrreally good one."

He rolled his R, voice dropping to a deep purr and making Gray blush. This was further than he dared go while they were faking it, when all they needed to do was look romantic for Juvia and there was the risk of getting too comfortable with Gray when he might have still only put up with Natsu in order to have someone to help him deal with whatever came up during the pregnancy. He had plenty of tricks he honed with Lucy that he could dust off and put back to use again. Some might need a little more tweaking for their new recipient, but given the way Gray went scarlet, it was safe to say that he knew at least one thing that worked well with his new boyfriend.

Boyfriend. Natsu liked the ring of that word. He still thought Gray was mad for wanting him, but Gray wanted him, and he wanted Gray to be happy. Gray deserved to be happy, so Natsu would have to try his hardest to be someone who deserved Gray.

-x-

STA: Haha. So it turns out I'm the kinda petty who whines about irl drama in her author's notes. Did I mention that my friend Willow stole my jacket and she's dead to me now?

Ah… no. I kid. Really, I'm feeling better now. Last week's update came a couple hours after the breakup and it was fuckin' raw, but I'm pretty much over it. I knew most of those guys for like two months and the more distance I have from what went down, the more obvious it becomes that it really wasn't a good fit for me. They can keep doing them and I'll just keep looking for better placement for myself.

samuel bryant17: I don't really do sex scenes, so I've never thought of relationships in terms of top or bottom. I suppose just for mechanical convenience, if they had sex before Gray gave birth, he would probably be beneath Natsu. As for baby names, I had one picked out for a few years before I really started thinking of this fic.

ichika aono: Wait no more!

Kori no Koibito: Rule of conservation of details. There wasn't much reason to mention a potential health issue specific to Gray's situation if it wasn't going to come up in some way.

Sqydd: I'd love to say it was a Burn Out reference, but more likely I just wasn't thinking and through the same foods in twice.

sierra steinbrecher: I tend to overthink all my interactions myself. Perhaps I projected that onto them a little too hard. Sorry.