Summary: Part of the Gender Bend Cliché 'Verse. Zeref spends a little time playing the overprotective big brother with the help of Brandish.

Pairings: Brotherly Zeref/Natsu, Natsu/Luca, sort of not really Brandish/Luca, implied Zeref/Heartfilla women friendship, implied Zeref/Mavis, implied sisterly Erza/Natsu, implied Mira/Luca/Lisanna/Natsu friendship, and Cana/Luca friendship.

Author's Note: Thank you all for giving me over TWELVE THOUSAND AND THREE HUNDRED REVIEWS! Also this is for all of you that kept asking me to do overprotective Zeref in the Gender Bend series….

There was a naked woman in Luca's bath.

Sadly this was not an unusual occurrence, for reasons that Luca has yet to comprehend several girls from Fairy Tail seemed to prefer his bath, but what was unusual about this time was that this woman was someone he had only met once.

And she was the enemy.

Her name was Brandish, Luca remembered that much. she was pretty enough with her flawless pale skin, stunning facial features, and glossy green hair but she was also extremely powerful and ruthless enough to shrink an island and leave many people stranded in the middle of the ocean. Luca remembered that much as well.

He was, naturally, wary while Brandish simply looked bored.

"So this really is your house," Brandish drawled, unimpressed. "It gets a pass."

"How did you…." Luca trailed off and shook his head. Then it actually occurred to him that he was staring at a naked woman and he hastily turned round to face the wall. His cheeks burning with embarrassment. "Why is one of the twelve is taking a bath in my house?!" he yelped.

"Why indeed?" Brandish said. She still sounded bored and utterly unimpressed but Luca couldn't help but get the feeling she was trying to be mysterious for reasons that simply left him bamboozled. "You have left an impression on me."

Luca breathed in deeply and prayed for patience. He was supposed to be helping his guild fight a war. Natsu was out there right now in a middle of a deadly battle and what was he doing? Entertaining bored women in his bath tub apparently…

"Why are you in my house?" he repeated firmly.

"Why should I answer that when you are rude and inconsiderate enough to not look at me?" Brandish shot back. Any other woman Luca would suppose she was pouting but the question was delivered with the same monotonous bored and unimpressed drawl from before. Luca had no doubt her facial expression was just as bland. "You can look at me if you want," the flirty words fell flat as Brandish's tone remained unchanged. "I don't care."

Luca can believe that entirely.

Anyone who can help themselves to someone else's bath without being friends for many years was going to not care who sees them naked.

"I care," Luca stressed indignantly, "it is rude and impolite for me to even be in the same room as you while you bath. I refuse to break my own principles because you couldn't keep your clothes on in a stranger's house."

"You are hardly a stranger."

"I wouldn't call one brief encounter to make us well acquainted enough for you to be nude in my house," Luca said stiffly, "now would you please exit my bath tub and put some clothes on?! My towel is just over there."

"No one needs to be friends to be naked together," Brandish pointed out. If it was someone like Cana who said that, Luca would have heard the sexual advance a mile away from the leering tone and instantly get flustered and embarrassed. Instead the words were uttered in that unwaveringly, disturbing, tone. Luca felt simultaneously violated and chilled to the bone. "You know there's enough room for two of us."

Luca now also felt nauseated on top of it all.

The idea of being naked with anyone that wasn't the love of his life made him feel sick but this – this! – felt so disgusting, and degrading, and disturbing, that Luca felt bile rise up in his throat immediately.

"No," he coughed trying to clear his throat, "thank you."

"You could wash my back."

"No," Luca repeated firmly, "thank you."

"I could wash yours."

There was no way in hell was Luca ever going to be naked, vulnerable, and have his back turned (in trust not out of politeness like now) to an enemy. That was just begging to be stabbed in the back repeatedly to death.

Also the idea just really sickened him.

He felt like he was just a toy for this woman.

"I said," he hissed through gritted teeth, "no thank you!"

"How boring," there was a splashing sound and Luca could imagine Brandish lounging in his bath with her feet propped up like some sort of Lady of the manor. The mental image infuriated him. Why couldn't this woman take the hint and get the hell out of his bathroom?! "You're such a prude. Are you sure that you don't want to take one teeny little peek at the very least? You might find it'll change your mind."

"I'm good," Luca said quietly, "now please leave before I am forced to make you leave."

"I would like to see you try," Brandish actually scoffed at that. It was the first time she didn't sound bored at all. She sounded disbelievingly and amused at the idea of Luca making her do something. "That would require you to actually look at me."

There was some more splashing sounds and then a light pitter patter as water droplets fell from Brandish's body to the cool tiles of Luca's bathroom floor. Luca had no doubt Brandish had gotten out of the bath and judging by the smallest, barely distinguishable, sounds she was moving towards him.

He stepped further away when he felt the air around him shift as she reached out to touch him.

"That is enough, Brandish," a silky smooth voice from Luca's side murmured sinisterly, "I shall take it from here."

Luca turned and for the first time since he entered his bathroom (he could really kick himself for that) he noticed a pale, dark-haired, boy sitting on his toilet. The boy was impeccably dressed in black and white and looked refined, unbothered, and undisturbed by what he had witnessed.

"I want to rip his throat out!" Luca shivered at the sudden furious outburst that came from Brandish. "I want to make him suffer."

"I promise," the boy's dark eyes gleamed menacingly, "you can rip whatever is left into confetti to your heart's content but first I want a word with the boy."

"As you wish," Brandish said deferentially, "Your Majesty."

Luca stiffened at that.

He was staring at Zeref.

The blackest, darkest, most powerful and most evil of mages in all of history was sitting on Luca's toilet….

A little part of him (the heavily influenced by Natsu and Fairy Tail part) wanted to giggle at that.

"So," Zeref said softly, "you are Luca Heartfilla."

"Yes," Luca said far more calmly than he actually felt. Inwardly he was screaming in fear and all of his instincts were telling him to run away, to jump out of his bathroom window, to call for help, to do something, but his body refused to move. He was immobilised out of sheer fear as his feet remained rooted to the ground. His heart raced, terrified, but he was barely breathing his body was so numb. "And you are Zeref. Forgive me for not offering you better hospitality but you were hardly invited."

Zeref's lips twitched in amusement. "So there is some fire in you," he murmured, "I was beginning to think you had no personality whatsoever you were so bland and unresponsive."

He stood up and began to circle Luca like an overgrown crow ready to peck his eyes out. Luca kept his chin held up defiantly as he turned round to keep eye contact with Zeref. Those fathomless dark eyes were strangely soft and warm while furious and terrifying at the same time.

It was hypnotising.

"I could almost see what it is that Natsu sees in you," Zeref said, "you are as charismatic as Layla."

Luca felt like he had been punched in the stomach.

"You…." He mumbled through numb lips, "…you…knew my mother?"

"We were good friends," Zeref murmured softly, "I was also good friends with Anna, and Ellen, and Zora, and Helena, and Lydia, and so many more. Four hundred years of Heartfilla woman and then there's you. The first boy just when Natsu reaches womanhood. The Gods are laughing at me."

Luca didn't know what to make at this.

There had been an implication back during the war with Tartarus that the celestial spirits knew the demons. That the Celestial King had fought with Mard Greer before but Luca was too busy fighting for his life, trying to recover from the trauma, to ever question it.

Now….now he is finding out that they hadn't always been enemies, that Zeref and his family had been allies.

No wonder the Eclipse Gate required the twelve keys.

His ancestors had helped build it.

"Why would they be laughing at you?" Luca couldn't help but ask. "The Gods, I mean."

Zeref smiled sorrowfully and in that moment Luca could understand why Mavis was so desperately in love with him. There was something kind and damaged about this boy that made Luca want to like him and care for him.

He wanted to be Zeref's friend.

"When my informants told me that a Heartfilla had joined Fairy Tail, I had planned to avoid you in the final battle," Zeref said quietly, "out of my constant friendship with your family I was not going to lay a finger on you deliberately. If you died it would not be at my hand. After all your family has been my only solace in these last few centuries."

Luca didn't like the sound of the past tense there. It sounded like Zeref had changed his mind and was going to kill him now and Luca would much rather live until he was an old man.

(Not that that was going to be likely with Natsu has his partner but a man could dream…right?)

"But then," Zeref's jaw twitched visibly, "I heard the reports of Natsu staying in your apartment overnight, that she had been seen wearing nothing but your shirts, that you share a bed, and those marks!" he spat out as he pointed at Luca's neck. "Those marks were the final straw!"

Luca flushed as he placed a protective hand over the love bites Natsu had inconveniently placed there during their last kissing session. He had already been leered at by all the perverts of Fairy Tail, uncomfortably questioned by Mira and Lisanna, and interrogated to near death by an overprotective Erza. He really didn't need an evil overlord killing him to add on that list.

His fear of Zeref, however, faded in a sudden flash of fury of his own. Natsu had confessed recently that Zeref had cried upon seeing her on Tenrou Island and that he had deliberately sought her out at Tartarus. She was genuinely terrified that Zeref might be obsessed with her especially when he promised her great tragedy.

Luca was not going to let this freak cause Natsu any harm.

"Natsu is her own woman," he said calmly, "you have no say in who or how she chooses to spend her time. Our romantic life is private and none of your business."

"Pardon me," Zeref replied icily but politely, "where are my manners? I should introduce myself." He gave a little formal bow. "My name is Zeref Dragneel, I would say I am pleased to meet you but we both know that is a lie."

"D-D-Dragneel?!" Luca stuttered slightly out of shock. "You are an ancestor of Natsu's?"

"No, I am not her ancestor," Zeref said flatly, "I am her big brother."

Luca's eyes widened at that. "B-B-But that would make Natsu over four hundred years old!" he squawked. "How is that possible?!"

"Natsu is only technically over four hundred years old," Zeref said unruffled and actually sounding a little bored at the conversation at hand, "she has not lived those four hundred years though. I created the Eclipse Gate so she could come to this time unscathed."

Luca inhaled sharply as realisation hit him hard. Zeref and Natsu were brother and sister. Luca's family had been involved in making those damn awful gates. Luca and Natsu were entwined with one another long before they met. There was no doubt about it, there was some sort of sick cosmic joke at their expense.

No wonder Zeref thought the Gods were laughing at them.

"I did not," Zeref said frostily as his dark eyes suddenly swirled with red and purple insanity, "devote my time to bring my little sister back from the dead, to keep her alive and safe from harm, to send her away to a better time, just so you could besmirch her innocence and steal her virtue."

Luca wanted to desperately tell Zeref that it had totally been the other way round. Natsu had been the one to pin him to the sofa and snog the living daylights out of him. He had yet to initiate any romantic contact with her as she had taken to jumping on him whenever the urge hit her.

There was nothing innocent about Natsu Dragneel.

Somehow though Luca felt that would only ensure Zeref smiting him down with whatever deadly, evil, powers his curse had wrought him.

Luca really would like to turn up to his first real date with Natsu as a human boy and not a pile of ashes….

"I am going to enjoy tearing you from limb to limb," Zeref said darkly as a black aura that matched his fury seeped out of him, "I will slit you from your naval to your throat and force you to feast on your entrails before I pluck your eyes out and as you scream from the sheer agony of it all I will bathe in your blood. Then, maybe, just maybe, if you are lucky enough, I shall be merciful enough to end you there and then."

"You will only make Natsu cross," Luca said bravely, "and then she will make your life a living hell."

"I am in living hell," Zeref said, "and now I shall send you to a hell worse than mine. Prepare to die, Luca Heart-"

BANG!

Luca's bathroom door flew open and slammed into the wall hard enough to make the paint chip off. Luca's mouth dropped open as Cana burst in and held up one of her glowing cards without a single hesitation as she glared ferociously at Zeref. "SLEEP!" she commanded.

Luca's jaw dropped even further as Zeref suddenly slumped to the floor and a loud, uncharacteristic, snore ripped out of him.

He was definitely Natsu's big brother with a snore like that.

"Don't just stand there!" Cana shouted. "My spell won't hold him for long. Come on!" Luca let himself be dragged out of his own bathroom and his eyes widened in astonishment when he saw Brandish tied up and gagged on his bed. Cana had been here for quite some time apparently. "Jesus Christ Luca!" Cana cried out as they ran out of his apartment and down the street. "Bloody Zeref, the Zeref, the darkest and most deadly mage in black magic history, the tyrannical emperor of the most dangerous, richest, countries in the world, had just come into your apartment to personally assassinate you himself. What the hell did you do to piss him off?!"

"Slept with his little sister apparently!"

"….WHAT?!"