Bickslow rolled off the lounge and onto the floor with a grunt as Lucy walked into the living room, chipper as usual. How anyone could be awake and functioning at that ungodly hour was beyond Bickslow.

"Good morning, Bickslow," she said cheerily, bouncing Ingrid on her hip.

He pulled the blanket from the lounge and over his head, mumbling something along the lines of 'go the fuck away' into the floor.

She giggled slightly, followed by the sound of a squeal that was undoubtedly Ingrid. As far as Bickslow was aware, Lucy couldn't make that sound. "Come on, I need to have a shower and she's awake. She just needs to be fed," she said.

"No," Bickslow mumbled into his arm that he was using as a pillow, pulling the blanket tighter over himself.

"You can have the rest of the strawberries."

Damn it, she's good. Bickslow quickly sat up, throwing the blanket back and moving to kneel on the lounge and over the back of it. "Fine. Deal," he said, stretching his arms out to take the squealing bundle before Lucy padded back down the hall with a smug grin, and honestly, Bickslow couldn't help but lean forward slightly to watch as she disappeared towards the bathroom. Her pyjama shorts were incredibly short, and well, he was Bickslow.

So he got up from the lounge again and walked around it and into the kitchen, adjusting his hold on Ingrid as he opened the fridge to get the strawberries. Honestly, he would have eaten them the day before after his proposal stunt had she not promised him the entire weekend free from parenting duties if he didn't actually eat them.

It was as he was filling up the bottle with the formula did he realise that the five-month-old in his arms was staring up at him as he placed another strawberry in his mouth. "I would give you one if she wouldn't kill me for it," he said to her as she twisted the cap on the bottle.

But she kept staring, and when he reached out to pick up another one, she followed it. I mean… What's the harm if it's just a little bit? When it came to feeding Ingrid, they'd been experimenting. For the most part, it had been the formula, but she really seemed to like the pureed food, but not so much the rice cereal, and honestly, Bickslow didn't blame her for crying when they'd come near her with it because it honestly looked disgusting.

With a shrug, he pulled a small knife from the drawer and placed one of the strawberries on a small cutting board and cut off the tiniest piece he could manage, because after all, he didn't want to be blamed for making a baby choke on food. So when he finally gave her the tiny piece of cut up strawberry, he watched as her little mouth worked on it and her tiny face went from looking strangely confused as her brain tried to comprehend what it was she was eating and back to happy when she realised she liked it. Bickslow scoffed. Trust the kid to like strawberries. Because really, it made sense.

Ingrid ended up getting the rest of the strawberry in little pieces as Bickslow shook his head, always watching her to make sure she wasn't looking like she was going to choke as he ate his own.

When Lucy got out of the shower and walked back into the living room after getting dressed and ready, Bickslow was lying back on the lounge with Ingrid on his lap as he scrolled through his phone. He looked over his shoulder when he heard her in the kitchen and turned on the couch. "Hey, so, funny story," he began with a slight smirk when she glanced in his direction.

"And what's that?" Lucy asked as she poured the milk into the bowl of cereal.

"She likes strawberries."

"…You gave her strawberries?" she asked as she raised an eyebrow before picking up the bowl and a spoon and walking over to the lounge, making herself comfortable down one end as she brought a knee up with her foot on the cushion.

Bickslow shrugged as he put his feet back on the ground, dropping his phone to the lounge beside him before bouncing Ingrid on his lap slightly. "She was giving me weird looks when I was eating them." When he leant back on the lounge, he lifted her up into the air and brought her down, brushing his nose gently against her own. "But we all like strawberries, don't we?" he said, chuckling when Ingrid started squealing with her own laughter and babbling in her own nonsense language.

Lucy shook her head as she took a spoonful of the cereal. The fact that Ingrid likes strawberries was honestly not that surprising, considering herself and Bickslow who were sort of, technically her parents were fighting over them and using them as leverage – that's just how much they liked them. When it came to Bickslow and Ingrid, however, Lucy was still a little confused. He seemed happy when she laughed at him and although he made it seem like he hated doing anything to do with her, she knew he didn't really, but that still wasn't to say he was totally okay with it all, because neither of them were.

But until they got out of there, they kind of had an obligation to look after the kid, and honestly, it wasn't all that bad.

The restaurant where the cooking class that Freed had signed them up for was on the ground floor of a building in the next street over. Out the front of the building, the large semi-outdoors dining area was closed off by the large white arches that had small leafy gardens between each column, creating a closed in area. The only one that was open was the centre one.

Being a little before 9 a.m., the restaurant wasn't officially open, but it was open for cooking classes which it apparently did quite often before they opened for general serving in the late afternoon. The large group walked through the centre arch and into the dim semi-outdoors area. Although it was completely covered from the top, the front was open.

They followed Freed through to the indoor dining area through the glass double doors, where they were greeted by a middle-aged man in a chef's uniform, hat and all. There were a few other people in the room, sitting down at the tables near the man and were obviously there for the same class they were.

"Welcome to Magnolia Q!" the man said with a bright smile, reaching out to shake Freed's hand a little over-enthusiastically. "Are you all here for the class this morning?"

Freed nodded. "Yes, we are."

"Wonderful!" he said as he turned to pick up a clipboard and a pen from behind him. "Now, what were the first names?"

And so as he pointed to each one, they all said their own names and after each one, the man would look back down to the clipboard and look down the list a few times before finding the name, ticking it off, and looking back up again. It took a while, and that was partly because when he got to Gray, the man had assumed that it was his last name and kept asking for his first name, to which Gray replied with Gray, each and every time. And then there was the issue where the man had assumed Erza was just a typo on the form and the name was actually Ezra. The scarlet-haired woman had had to be held back and calmed down before they all got kicked out of the restaurant.

Right on nine o'clock, the chef led them through the indoor dining area and through some steel doors at the back of the building and into a large kitchen with multiple benches, ovens, stoves, and aprons. Each bench was set up for two, so for convenience, it was easier to just go with whoever they'd, well… woken up with. So that left Bickslow and Lucy together on one bench. Since Mira had already gotten the cooking thing figured out (none of them really knew how she'd done it so fast when half of them were still trying to figure out how to use the toasters), Laxus had paired with Freed, and Cana had paired with Erza.

As they all finished tying up their aprons, a woman walked in and instead she wore a black chef's uniform. Se clapped her hands together as she looked over the twenty-odd people in the room. "Good morning, everyone! My name is Justine and I'm both the head chef here at Magnolia Q and the teacher of this class!"

Bickslow leaned down to whisper in Lucy's ear, "Is it just me or does she look like a slightly more feminine version of Freed?"

Lucy tilted her head slightly as she looked towards the chef, completely blocking out whatever it was she was saying. She noticed how she was of a slim build with long legs and how her eyes were almost the same shade as Freed's. Not to mention the fact that her hair was tied in a similar fashion, and was even the same light green. The fact that her first name was Freed's last name was honestly just spooky.

With a slight shake of her head she tried to stifle her giggle when she realised Bickslow was right. When Bickslow startled chuckling and he ducked his head with his hands on the counter, she had to bite down on her hand to stop herself from bursting out into laughter. Her shoulders were shaking as he tried to hold it in, and then, when she thought she had it under control and her face was bright red, Bickslow finally cracked and burst out laughing, leaning over as he held his stomach.

Everyone turned to stare at the two – Bickslow was laughing almost uncontrollably (which really wasn't out of the ordinary), but Lucy was finding it near impossible not to laugh now.

Justine glared at them as she folded her arms across her chest and walked slowly over to their bench. "Am I interrupting you two?"

And when she came to stand in front of the bench, Lucy lost it – completely. Close up, she was like the spitting image of Freed, just with slightly darker eyes and red lipstick.

"If you two wouldn't mind stepping outside, if you please," Justine ordered then as she turned and headed back to her own bench at the front of the room. "Feel free to join us again when you are able to act like adults," she added bitterly.

Lucy could only nod as she turned to follow Bickslow out of the room who was still laughing uncontrollably.

"Holy shit, Cosplayer," Bickslow said through his laughter as he steaded himself on a wall, still leaning forward slightly.

"Not my fault," She replied around her own giggles that were slowly becoming controllable – if she looked away, that is. Lucy didn't think it was possible to laugh at anything that ridiculous, not until they'd found themselves in Magnolia 2.0 anyway. Already she'd laughed at more stupid things than she could count and it was only day five.

As she fanned her face with her hands, looking up towards the ceiling as she tried to cool her face down and calm herself down, Bickslow's cackling had turned back into slight chuckles as he picked himself up from the floor slowly (he'd ended up laughing on the floor at one point). A few steady breaths and she was back to being somewhat normal – her face hurt from smiling so much though.

Eventually, they were able to go back into the kitchen and when they walked back in, everyone was already getting started on the first dish. As they got back to the bench, the chef came back over and stared at the two through narrowed eyes. "Now, you haven't missed much, but I would still suggest getting a move on so you don't get too far behind." Justine pointed to the laminated recipe in the top left of the bench. "We're starting with the salad. If you don't eat meat, there's substitutes at the back in the walk-in." And then she turned and walked over to another bench, making sure no one had run into any problems so far.

"Well, I can't really cook. Just thought I'd mention that," Bickslow said with a shrug as he picked up the recipe and handed it to the blonde. "What about you?" Because for the last five days, they hadn't really done much in the way of actual cooking. They didn't even go near the stove until the day before.

She shrugged as she looked over the recipe's instructions. Pretty simple, she thought. "I enjoy cooking, but I'm nowhere near as good as Mira. Anyway, we start with the chicken," she said as she placed the recipe down and looked over all the ingredients that had been set out on their bench. "Ah, there it is!"

"So, what do you want me to do?"

Lucy reached across the bench to pick up the chicken breast that was sitting on a plate before sliding it onto the board in front of her, glancing back at the recipe again. "Um… You can mix up the seasoning, if you'd like," she suggested as he picked up one of the knives in front of her to cut the chicken into small strips.

"Right then," Bickslow mumbled as he looked down at the recipe, and then back at the ingredients in front of him, and then back down to the recipe. What the fuck are all of these things?

Lucy glanced up when she saw Bickslow hesitate and a small smirk played on her lips. "You know the herbs have labels on them, right? You just have to measure it out."

"…Oh." And when he looked back to the small containerss full of the dried herbs, he realised that they were in fact labelled, and all of them were the ones he needed to mix together. Damn it, Bicks.

So as Lucy waited for Bickslow to mix up all of the herbs and spices in the large bowl, she stared down at the two rings on her left hand. It had only just occurred to her that they hadn't taken them off, and she didn't know why. She had no reason to keep them on. With a light shake of her head, she slipped them off her finger and into her pocket.

"Why'd you do that?" Bickslow mumbled as he added the last of the ingredients to the bowl.

She looked up to see the instructor walking past their bench, watching their work as she did so. With a shrug, Lucy slid all of the thinly cut pieces into the bowl, "I don't know," she said, lowering her voice as Justine glared at them once again. "No reason to keep them on…"

"They're just rings…"

"No, they're not. Besides, they'll get dirty."

Bickslow only shrugged "Whatever."

"You all did a great job on the salads," Justine said, looking over the group. "Well, most of you," she added as she looked towards Bickslow and Lucy and then Natsu and Lisanna, who had both ended up burning the chicken to a crisp. "But now we'll be moving on to mini strawberry tarts!"

And with that, both Lucy and Bickslow took an interest.

"Now, since we only have a little over an hour left and another dish to get through, we will be using ready-made pastry. Again, it's a fairly simple recipe so you should be able to manage it, but I'll be checking on your progress as you go." She clapped her hands together with another large smile, she said, "And don't forget to preheat your ovens now!"

They both stared down at the dials on their oven as they tried to figure it out, much like everyone else in the room who wasn't a native of Magnolia 2.0. It was honestly embarrassing. The stove they'd figured out in their own apartment, but not the oven. Bickslow looked around at the people who weren't part of their group and tried to watch what they had done.

Lucy, on the other hand, was trying it out her own way. Hesitantly, she turned the dial until the arrow pointed up with the temperature marking that was listed in the recipe and she jumped back slightly when a red light appeared. Maybe that means it's heating up? With a shrug, she stood back up and looked over the recipe once more.

Roll out the pastry.

Yeah, that's easy, she thought as she grabbed the rolling pin and handed it to Bickslow, only after she poked him with it to get his attention. "You can roll it out," she said as he looked down to the rolling pin, the pastry, and then to Lucy.

"Yes, ma'am."

So as Bickslow got to rolling out the pastry after pushing his sleeves up to his elbows, Lucy turned to lean against the bench. There wasn't anything to do until the cases were in the oven so she had a few minutes.

"So," Bickslow said, glancing up slightly. "Did you wanna stop by the grocery store on the way back after and get stuff for later? And more strawberries."

Lucy shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. There's not much else left in the apartment anyway." At that point, they'd only gone to the grocery store once and that was the day before, and the entire group had gone because Freed had dragged them to it after they'd walked past it. Turns out, the currency was completely different and so by extension, the prices of things confused them a bit. If that hadn't confused Bickslow, then it was the fact that himself and Lucy had cards that they could use to pay for things, each were the exact same apart from the name, of course. When Bickslow had used it the day before just to see how it worked, he'd had a minor panic attack when the machine had asked him for a pin, but for whatever reason, when he stared at the keypad, the numbers 1506 were floating around his head, and as it turns out, that was the pin. He still hadn't had a chance to find out what that number meant, but he was going to. He'd make sure of it.

Oh, and then there was the Magnolia Banking app on each and every one of their phones since they all apparently had accounts with them. So between the fact that the currency and price of things was different, neither of them could really tell if they had a lot of money or if they didn't at all because if it was Jewels, then it wouldn't be much. Honestly, money was confusing.

So when they finally got the cases in the tray and in the oven, it was time to work on the filling, which was really just putting a few things into a bowl and mixing them together. Even Bickslow thought it was easy, and he sucked at anything to do with cooking. After all, he'd managed to completely burn chicken in a matter of minutes.

Once everyone was done with the strawberry tarts, they'd moved onto the mini pizzas and both Bickslow and Lucy had been glad that they'd been separate because there was no way they could have agreed on the ingredients. Everything Bickslow liked on pizza, Lucy hated, and vice versa. Soon after that, the class had ended and honestly, the chef seemed all too glad that it was over, especially by the way she glared at Bickslow and Lucy while gesturing to the door – with a smile, nonetheless.

When they'd all finally made it out of the building and back out on the street in front of the building, everyone turned to face Bickslow and Lucy who had come out last.

"Alright, what had you two in hysterics?" Laxus asked as he glared at the two.

Bickslow chuckled as he looked down to Lucy who was with her own small smirk. "The chef was totally a chick version of Freed."

"Excuse me?" Freed asked, staring wide-eyed at his friend.

"I knew something was familiar about her!" Evergreen shouted as Freed went a deep shade of red and everyone started laughing at the poor man.

Bickslow moved to put his arm around Freed's shoulder as they slowly walked. "Ah, cheer up, dude," he said with a wide grin. "You have better hair than she does."

So they walked mostly in silence until they got back to the road where the apartment building was. Most were too busy looking up at their surroundings to talk much since everyone was still trying to get their head around the new world. But when everyone else rounded the corner for their street, Lucy and Bickslow stopped. "Yo, Laxus," Bickslow called, causing the blond man to turn around and raise an eyebrow. "Tell Mira we'll get Ingrid when we're back in a bit. I'm sure she'll be fine with her for another thirty minutes."

"Whatever, man," Laxus mumbled with a wave of his hand as he turned around again."Just don't leave the kid with her for too long." Because god knows the demon will get attached.

The small grocery store was only a few more minutes down the street and it was close enough that they weren't going to get lost on their way back.

"So, any thoughts on lunch or dinner yet?" Lucy asked as she picked up a basket from the front of the store, swinging it over her forearm as she walked through the small gates.

"Dunno." Bickslow shrugged, instantly pushing past the blonde and over to the fruits and vegetable section which was right at the front. "Kinda sick of cereal though, not gonna lie."

"Yeah… Me too…" Lucy agreed as she followed him into the store, shaking her head she realised he'd gone straight for where the strawberries were. "Get two," she said, and then when he gave her a questioning look, she added, "So we don't argue over who gets to eat them."

"That… is a brilliant idea." Damn it, why didn't I think of that?

And not too long after, they walked out of the store with a bag each and headed back to their apartment. For whatever reason, they'd decided on trying the chicken salad again for dinner (considering it did look pretty good… before Bickslow had burned it to a crisp), and Bickslow made it quite clear he was not going to be the one cooking it, and Lucy was definitely glad for that.

They still hadn't decided on the lunch issue though, but they did decide they'd just think of something when they got back to the apartment and got Ingrid down for another nap, because it was noon, and if she wasn't already driving Mira insane, then she was asleep. Honestly, they didn't know what she'd be doing.

As Lucy pushed the door to their apartment open, balancing the bag in one arm, Bickslow just had to make it worse and hand the bag he'd been carrying to her, leaving her to shuffle awkwardly to try and stop the other bag she'd been holding from falling to the ground.

"I'm gonna go get Ingrid," he said before turning and disappearing down the hall and towards the elevator, leaving Lucy to scowl at him before pushing the door open the rest of the way with her back and dumping the bags on the counter.

When Bickslow hopped out of the elevator as the doors opened, he was greeted by the sight of Laxus standing in the small lobby outside their apartment with a scowl on his face and his arms folded. Typical Laxus, really. Bickslow went to speak, only to receive the universal signal for silence from Laxus, so instead, he just raised an eyebrow and followed him into the apartment.

What he didn't expect to see was Mira curled up on the large lounge with her feet tucked under her and Ingrid asleep in her arms. Bickslow almost felt bad for having to move Ingrid, just because she looked so peaceful and he was also grateful when she wasn't crying or screaming.

He grimaced when he slowly walked over to where Mira sat, bending down slightly as the woman tried her best not to disturb the sleeping infant in her arms while passing her to Bickslow.

Please don't wake up, please don't wake up, please don't wake up, Bickslow thought as Mira slowly placed her into his own arms. He stood up slowly when he pulled Ingrid in to cradle her, only shifting slightly when Mira placed the bag with all of Ingrid's things over his shoulder.

Slowly and carefully, he walked back out to the small foyer, making sure not to disturb her. "Thank you," he whispered to Mira who replied with her usual bright smile, and Laxus with an eye roll before walking away.

As he waited for the elevator to stop on his floor, he stared down at Ingrid and a smile lit up his face whether he'd wanted to or not. Even though neither of them had really come to terms with the fact that in that world, they were parents, when he looked down at Ingrid, he couldn't help but actually feel like one. An actual father – sure, a pretty bad one at that, but still. She was relying on them to look after her because she had no other choice. To her, himself and Lucy were the centre of her very small world and she only existed because of them – well, a version of them, anyway.

Bickslow couldn't help but feel connected to her, and he knew that was because she was technically his own kid. It was only day five and he'd already changed how he saw things. Them being in Magnolia 2.0 wasn't exactly a nightmare, Ingrid existing wasn't terrible, and him being married to Lucy honestly could have been worse.

The point was that Bickslow had already gotten attached to Ingrid, and so had Lucy. All it had taken was a matter of days.

So when the elevator finally did stop, he only just made it out in time before the door closed and kept going down. Another quick glance down to Ingrid and he was honestly relieved to see she was still asleep, so slowly and carefully he walked down the hall. Upon reaching the door to the apartment, he gently adjusted his hold on Ingrid, all while managing to keep the bag from falling off his shoulder, and twisted the handle, pushing it open slowly.

"So, I—" Lucy began when the door opened, only to look up and see Bickslow gently closing the door behind him with his back as he held a finger up to his lips. And honestly, Lucy wasn't going to mess with that, especially not if Ingrid was asleep. She hated the crying as much as Bickslow did. So instead, she went back to putting the groceries away quietly and Bickslow went down the hall after dropping the bag to the floor gently.

And gently, oh so gently, did he lower her into the crib, all whilst grimacing just because if she were to wake up and start screaming, it would be then, after he'd tried so hard not to wake her up.

But when he quietly crept out of her room, closing the door behind him, he thought he'd done it. Mission succ—

And then the unmistakeable sound of her whimper was heard through the door and Bickslow could only drop his head in defeat.

"Almost," Lucy said from the kitchen with a small smirk that made Bickslow shake his head before turning and going back into the nursery. He'd been so close.