Six hours without a word.

How else would one's wife react to the idea that her psychotic father-in-law had a standing invitation to dine with them?

This was an improvement because before the silent treatment started, there had been some very high-decibel, agitated protestations.

A door slammed upstairs and he rolled his eyes.

Layla crawled over to where he sat on the couch and he picked her up and pulled her into his lap, and Yuri climbed up to sit on the other side of his lap.

He reached into his pants, and Laxus sighed. "Son, I don't know what you're doing, but get your hands out of there."

Yuri took out a very large bug and held it out for his sister. "This for you."

Laxus thumped it out of his hands across the room. "Son, there are billions of girls in this world and not one of them wants a dead roach as a gift. And stop putting stuff in your pants. You're going to end up with a weird rash or something. And keep your hands out of there. It is never okay for anyone, anywhere to stick their hands in their underwear."

"Why?"

"Just because."

"'Cause why?"

"Just...hands out of your pants, and no bugs for girls."

He seemed confused by this - why wouldn't someone want something like that?

Yuri heard another door slam. "Mama's mad?"

Laxus nodded.

He'd caught them having a fight and had been mostly unbothered by it. By this point in his life as a toddler, he'd pushed all of his mother's buttons the wrong way and in the right order and seen her get a little pissed. Namely, when he used toilet paper to wrap his sister up like a mummy.

It was a really fascinating and exciting thing for him, and he sometimes felt driven by a spirit of mischief to provoke his mother. He inherited this from his father.

"Say sowwy to Mama."

Yuri had been taught well; he knew that if you do something stupid and piss someone off, one should 'say sowwy,' give a good hug, and move on from the entire thing. It made him happy to know his son was like he was. He liked the person he was slowing growing into.

He was not, however, going to apologize.

Laxus ruffled his hair and then did the same thing to his daughter's hair.

She looked up. "Baaabababaga, Dada," she uttered in a tone that said, 'stop messing up my hair.'

Lucy really hadn't been gone very long on her job, but while she was, their son was almost kidnapped, a man's butt got very literally chewed off in the front yard, and - this was what she was ready to skewer her husband for - Ivan Dreyar had not only come into contact with her children, but Laxus had kind of somewhat given him a little ground in having a relationship of some kind.

He'd never pissed her off more seriously, but he found her anger was somewhat hypocritical and he honestly wasn't sorry. They both had a very long list of both daddy and mommy issues, and he was amazed nothing like this had happened yet.

They had their worst fight so far, and he contemplated taking a job and leaving for a few days, but he didn't want her to feel like she won anything.

When Layla needed her diaper changed, he carried her upstairs into enemy territory, and went into the nursery with Yuri climbing the stairs behind him.

He entered Layla's pink princess of a room and went to his work.

They went to Yuri's room immediately thereafter to get more toys, and he felt her approach with dread.

"Let's talk," she said, reaching out for his hand.

Laxus withdrew his hand from hers.

Lucy nodded. "Okay, fine. If you're not done being an asshole, I can be patient. I have the rest of my life."

Yuri, who was trying to drag a big sack of wooden bricks toward the door, looked up in awe. "That's a bad word, Mama."

Lucy bent down. "Sorry, Baby. Forgive Mommy for that, okay?"

"You made daddy mad?"

"Yes, baby."

"Say sowwy."

One of the strange things about parenting a toddler was that Yuri would offer observations and advice as he saw fit, and the things he said reflected all of the things they'd poured into him, intentionally or no. He did occasionally say some fairly random things. When Laxus was trying to wash a mountain of dishes, for instance, Yuri sat on the counter and told his father he should blow them up instead of washing them and Laxus actually thought this was a good idea.

The doorbell rang, and Laxus carried Layla down with him to answer it, thankful for a reason to walk past his wife without saying anything.

When he opened the door, Jet and Droy were there, and after speaking with him for a few minutes, Laxus nodded and shut the door again. He climbed the stairs with a tense expression and found his wife sitting on the floor with their son in his room.

"Babe."

"Don't 'Babe' me right now."

Laxus bristled at how nasty her reply was. "Mrs. Dreyar, Levy went into labor and something went wrong. They took her to the hospital. It's serious."

Levy's pregnancy had been rough, and Lucy had confided in him more than once about how worried she was about her. The two women were close, and in some ways, Levy was following down the same path Lucy had gone, but it had been harder all along.

Lucy seemingly forgot she was pissed, and her anger was replaced mostly by fear. "Levy…"

So they walked in uncomfortable silence to the hospital after they let Chelia know she was on baby duty for a while. At the hospital, there was a handful of Fairy Tail wizards that were close to Levy and Gajeel, and they all waited quietly.

The fact that they did so from across the room from one another cued everyone there pretty early on that they were fighting. They were both so good at giving each other bad looks that their glares alone were enough to make innocent bystanders want to hide.

Gajeel came out after a while, looking utterly terrified, but that was the effect a woman having a baby tended to have on a man. Laxus knew very well that no matter how big or how bad a man is, a woman in labor with his child provided an experience that was unsettling, exciting, and terrifying all at once. He assumed Gajeel's experience was probably more terrifying than anything else by this point.

Lucy went to him. "How's Levy?"

"Not good. There's some bleeding. The doctor might have to take the baby with surgery. So uhhh...that's the update."

Lucy tried to encourage him by saying, "It'll be okay."

"They might have to cut her open...this is my fault," Gajeel mumbled as he tottered on the verge of unraveling.

Lucy squeezed him tightly in a hug. "Go be strong for Levy, okay? Everything is going to be all right soon, and you're going to get to hold your son and you're going to be so happy."

Gajeel nodded and left, and Lucy went back to sitting on the opposite side of the room.

She glared as he approached and sat in the chair next to her.

"Do you want something?"

Laxus bent down and quietly said, "You are out of your goddamned mind if you think you're going to embrace some other man in front of me while you're not speaking to me."

Lucy knew from the tone of his voice that he was very serious about this, but she had been married to him for three years and was undeterred by his little moments. "Well, I clearly am out of my mind. Look who I married."

Laxus started fights.

She escalated them.

Addressing their marriage in such a way caused his face to form an expression she didn't quite understand but believed to be something between blind rage and confusion and hurt. And she realized she'd taken it a little bit too far.

They sat there for a long time, and Laxus said, "I feel like you should understand."

"Understand what? You let some psychotic creep come around? You invited him to our house. You let him touch our children. Just think about what he's done to Fairy Tail, to you, God, what's the matter with you?" she asked.

Laxus found himself in a peculiar position, because normally, she was struggling to help him understand how she felt, but now the tables were turned.

He said, "My dad is a bastard. He ignored me most of my childhood, he used me for his own gain, he manipulated me, he conspired against and attacked the guild to take something he wanted, but then again so did yours."

Indignation burned in her. "Don't you try to compare them!"

"Your father destroyed the guild, had most of our members beaten up, and almost had the Jupiter cannon fired at Magnolia, and had you beaten half to death to intimidate you into entering a forced marriage. That's some pretty deep shit, Lucy, but if he wasn't dead I bet he'd have been to dinner by now," he said.

Laxus had been on her last nerve.

Where he was now was so far beyond her last nerve she didn't even know how to express how she felt. She sat there stupefied.

She bent over and started to sob like a baby, although mostly because she was so pissed she didn't know how to express her anger. Laxus leaned his head against the wall and crossed his arms.

Ha said, "I bet even when all that was going on, you still hoped that someday, things would be okay. Am I allowed to feel that way to, or are you the only one who gets that privilege?"

This stopped Lucy.

Laxus rarely spoke about his father, even to her. The only feelings he ever expressed was toward their family, and he wasn't the type to go back and revisit the past. In his mind, it was what it was, but as she sat there, she wondered if maybe he really had gone through the same things as her.

It was true; if they tallied up the sins of Jude Heartfilia and Ivan Dreyar against Fairy Tail, her father won in a landslide. But there had been moments where she wondered if age and experience would make her father capable of having a good relationship with their family, despite all he did.

And she wondered if, under all the declarations of apathy, Laxus had the same sentiment buried somewhere deep in him.

"You're sure he won't hurt the kids?"

Laxus nodded. "He's actually pretty harmless if you think about it. Full of damaging information about Fairy Tail and supposedly hell bent on destroying the guild, but in twenty years of being a dick, nobody has ever been seriously injured or killed. Don't you think that's a little suspicious?"

"Did he put that lacrima in you so he could take it back?"

"He has never tried, not even once."

Lucy decided to let him win this war, because if the roles were switched, she believed he'd let her father come around a little. She was also tired and scared for Levy, and it took too much to fight and worry at the same time.

She leaned her head on his arm, and he wrapped his arm around her. "Daddy issues."

"I like to think I don't give a shit about Ivan, but blood is still blood."

Lucy nodded. "I think I loved my dad so much it didn't matter what he did. I guess that's the love of family, right? That's probably the way Yuri and Layla feel about us. No matter how much we mess up, they still believe in us to love them. Just like we believe…"

The other occupants of the waiting room were grateful when tension dropped from the air, and they waited quietly for what felt like an eternity.

Finally, the nurse came out and announced the baby had been safely delivered, and that he and mother were safe and sound.

Lucy and Laxus stayed longer than most, and once the crowd had mostly cleared, Gajeel took the baby to the empty waiting room to escape from the crowd and held him carefully. The only other person in the waiting room was Laxus, who was sleeping awkwardly in a chair with his mouth hung open while Lucy was with Levy.

The baby let out a cry, and Laxus was so conditioned to the noise that his eyes snapped open and for a second, he thought 'let me change this baby so I can go back to sleep.' When he realized where he was, he stood up and walked over to Gajeel before he burst out laughing.

"How much does that kid weigh?"

"Ten and a half pounds. Why?"

Laxus shook his head. "That is a fucking huge baby. Poor little Levy. You're probably never going to get laid again."

"Is he? Sam seems so tiny to me," Gajeel whispered.

The baby's foot came out of the blanket, and he clumsily tried to get the blanket right. The baby fussed a bit, and Gajeel continued his awkward attempts.

Laxus found himself fairly chill in this moment. "Sam, huh?"

"Yeah. I don't really know how to...baby. Do you know how this goes? He was wrapped up like a baby burrito, but I messed with it."

The elder yawned and nodded, taking the baby with practiced ease. In seven seconds, Sam was properly swaddled and back with Gajeel.

"You're like a baby ninja."

Laxus nodded. "You'll get used to it really fast if you're around a lot."

Gajeel touched his little blue-haired son's hair. "I worry I'll drop him or something."

"You'll be fine. Babies are pretty tough anyway."

The iron dragon slayer sniffed the baby. "He smells new."

"Babies tend to alternate between smelling really good and smelling really awful."

Laxus was amused in some weird, twisted way as he watched Gajeel and Natsu become parents because he still occasionally thought of them as 'kids' even though they weren't really that much younger than him. After two babies, his whole mentality toward babies was mostly relaxed, but from that vantage point, it was hilarious to watch another man become a father for the first time.

It was four in the morning before he and Lucy finally left to go home.

"I'm tired. A piggyback ride would be nice," she said with a yawn.

Laxus bent down so she could climb on his back and waited for her the snuggle close, wrapping her legs around his waist. "Babe, you can ride me anytime you want." He held her by the legs as he made his way toward their home. "I'm sorry about today."

"Me too."

"Yuri's a cute little guy, trying to get Mom and Dad to 'say sowwy.'"

"He is. I feel like he was the grownup today."

"That's scary."

She kissed his cheek. "Sam is a cute baby."

Laxus nodded. "Did you notice how huge he is? Like, how did Levy have such a huge freakin' kid?"

"Stitches."

"Say no more."

He felt another kiss. "How about some makeup sex when we get home?"

"That sounds good. You let me ride you home, and I'll let you ride me when we get there. Deal?"

Laxus smirked. "Can't say no to such a cute girl, can I?"

When they got home, they checked in on their sleeping babies.

Yuri was sleeping with his mouth open on top of his blankets in his 'big boy underwear' as his pajamas had clearly been removed and thrown on the floor during the night. This was fairly normal for him, as he seemed to prefer to sleep in his undies. They'd been trying in vain for most of his life to help him start liking clothes, but when it came to sleeping, he'd more or less won the battle. They'd put him in pajamas one time before bed and then leave him alone once he took them off.

He seemed like he was hot, so they turned on the fan and put a thin sheet over him, careful not to wake him.

They went down the hall to where Layla was sleeping in her crib, curled up with her thumb in her mouth. Laxus pulled it out and she smiled a little in her sleep.

"It's different for girls, right? I almost expected her to be a rowdy wild child like our son," Laxus said.

Lucy nodded in understanding. "She'll be brave when she gets older. One thing I know about being a girl is that the world always challenges girls. She's a Dreyar, so she'll be fine. Who knows? Isn't that the amazing thing about babies? Their future is completely unwritten."

Laxus gave in to his primary parental compulsion and reached down to play with her feet. The baby's mother only sighed, having resigned herself to the fact that he was going to bother the babies no matter what she thought about it.

The baby started to cry because he woke her up, which made him laugh as he lifted her from the crib.

"I'm sorry, baby," he said with a grin.

Lucy crossed her arms. "No, you're not. You'll do it again tomorrow."

"I love it when she's cranky. It's cute."

"Mama!" she cried reaching for Lucy.

Lucy took the baby from his arms. "Rejected!"

Laxus rolled his eyes as she rubbed her daughter's back and whispered in her ear about him.

Layla gave him a pouty glare and then hid her face in Lucy's shoulder, as if she was so angry she couldn't bear to look at him.

He laughed. "That's so cute I can't stand it."

"I don't like to look at him when he pisses me off either," Lucy gently said.

Laxus adored his girls, both mother and daughter.

Once they got the baby back to sleep, they headed upstairs and as soon as the door was locked, they were at it.

XXX

At six in the morning, someone knocked on the door, and his dragon ears picked up on the sound. He slid out of bed, annoyed he'd literally just gone to sleep, and plodded down the stairs. He knew he'd be up any minute with their son anyway, so he resigned himself to a day of exhaustion.

Natsu was standing on the other side of the door, holding a crying newborn. "Help! Lisanna is sick, and the baby just keeps yelling."

Iggy Dragneel had white hair, jade green eyes and a name that was possibly silly, but he showed pretty strong signs he got a little dragon blood like Yuri did. So, Laxus personally believed what he was named didn't matter because mocking a fire-breather was a clear and obvious bad choice.

Lisanna had contracted the flu and while Natsu was trying to let her rest and get better, their newborn was still being a newborn.

Natsu looked so tired.

Laxus sighed.

His choices were to be a dick, to wake up Lucy or Chelia and let her deal with this, or to do it himself. Disturbing sleeping women was generally not his style, so he seized the screaming infant from Natsu.

By the time he got the unhappy baby burped, Natsu had passed out on the couch.

He decided not to be an asshole, since he pawned Yuri off on Aquarius when he was a newborn and knew first hand how terrible it was to be a brand new father with a cranky infant. Sick wife on top of that?

Iggy actually seemed to love screaming. He did it even when he wasn't particularly upset, but to a new parent, any time the baby screams it's a five-alarm fire.

By the time Lucy woke up, it was almost noon, and when she came downstairs, she found Natsu in a comatose-like sleep on their couch. "What happened to him?"

"He had a kid. Iggy is upstairs in Layla's crib if you want to go be weird," he said.

Lucy and Natsu were such close friends that they had a weird love for the others' babies. This had been true since Yuri was born, and Lucy practically gushed over Iggy at every opportunity. Lucy hugged and kissed her kids and then went straight upstairs.

Their kids were playing in the living room, and when Laxus saw Layla upright on her feet, he peeked over the counter in the kitchen to see her standing as Yuri held her hands.

"See? It's easy!"

Laxus said, "Son, be careful. She's not ready to walk yet."

Layla lost her balance, fell, and took down Yuri. They fell together with a thud, and both broke out into giggles. Once she sat back upright, she reached right back for him, and Laxus decided to leave them alone. The little girl had wanted to run after her brother since she was born, and she was getting steadily closer toward that goal.

Yuri wanted her to be able to walk too, probably so they could get into trouble together, and for her to start talking. Sometimes he would just sit and talk to her even though she didn't understand or say anything back, and Laxus wondered if he could remember how he and Lucy did the same thing with him.

Lucy brought the baby downstairs and squealed over him. "He's such a good boy, yes he is."

Yuri was disturbed by this.

When Lucy sat in the chair with the baby, Yuri crawled into her lap somewhat unhappily. "What is it? You almost never want to sit with me these days. You're off having your adventures. Mama got a new baby."

The toddler sniffed the newborn, and knew this child did not belong to their family. "Nuh-uh."

What made it unbearably funny to Lucy was how serious he was. "You don't want a baby boy? A little brother?"

"I want ice cream."

Laxus always found it amusing when Lucy trolled their children, because when she chose to do it, she did it well. Their toddler really asked for it by being jealous.

He decided to join in on the fun because now he was curious. "What if we had a baby girl? You want another sister?"

Yuri gave it serious thought. "Ummmmmmm…'kay."

"So you don't mind if we have another baby, as long as it's not a boy."

"Yeah."

Laxus asked, "What would you say to a little brother?"

"Go away," he answered in his sweet little voice.

Yuri slid off her lap, as if disgusted by the conversation and sat with his sister.

After Natsu awoke refreshed and took his son home, Lucy turned to her husband and said, "Did our territorial toddler just tell us we better not have another son?"

"He did. He's a gutsy little man. You want to go upstairs and ruin his life?"

"Maybe in a couple of years."

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