The next months were actually really the happiest anyone in the family ever had. The career change meant they all got to spend more time together, and even though Laxus and Lucy worked long hours sometimes, the babies were always with someone who loved them-Makarov, Chelia, and occasionally uncle Natsu or Gajeel. The babies played together often, and had formed some kind of clique of children, of which Yuri was king as the oldest.

Sam Redfox and Iggy Dragneel were frequent visitors to their house because Makarov and Chelia were running a babysitting racket under the table and felt like Laxus and Lucy didn't know (they did - they also knew about the sports betting operation they were running when they took the kids to the park to play).

Makarov and Chelia were unlikely best friends, but they were both mischievous schemers and had become business partners in an assortment of 'business ventures.' Laxus and Lucy chose to let them continue their assorted mischief without addressing it because Makarov needed things to do during the day and Chelia was trying to avoid racking up student debt.

The guild started to flourish under its new leadership, although their relations with the Council continued to sour because Lucy played the part of barracuda with her typewriter.

Christmastime rolled around and as a family with two young children, Christmas was pretty much the biggest thing that happened all year. They took them to Crocus the weekend right before Christmas and showed them all the city lights after Lucy had a meeting with the treasury minister about Fairy Tail's 'settlement.'

At home, they had a huge pine tree that left their house 'stinking like the woods' as Laxus put it. The kids helped them hang (and break) many ornaments and it was very lively and lovely. Wrapped gifts surrounded the tree although they'd passed up the Santa Claus lore for a plethora of reasons.

Lucy's Christmas gift for her husband had taken months of preparation, careful timing, and sneaking around behind his back, but she was quite satisfied and eager for him to open the box as it sat beneath the tree with shiny red and green paper.

Now, this was the first Christmas that Yuri was really truly aware of what Christmas meant, so at 5:23 am, they awoke to the door being thrown open so hard it slammed against the wall. Laxus and Lucy barely had time to acquaint themselves with consciousness when he leapt onto the bed.

"IT'S CHRISTMAS!"

Laxus opened his eyes, looked over at the clock, and said, "Any chance I can convince you to go back to sleep?"

Yuri jumped on the bed and Lucy sat up to find their daughter standing in the door, dragging a stuffed bunny toy by the ears in a half-asleep daze.

"Mamaaaaaaaaaa…" she groggily whined, climbing onto the bed so she could flop down between them and snuggle her bunny.

Laxus looked down at her. "Are you ready to open presents?"

"Noooo!"

She curled up and closed her eyes. Layla would say 'no' to any question she was asked when half asleep, no matter what it was.

He tried to tickle her and she swatted his hand away. "Stop it! Go away!"

Laxus considered this an act of war and set to tickling her until she was kicking her feet in the air and screaming. "So you think you can wake me up, get in my bed, and then tell me to go away? Surely you take after your mother."

"Nooooo!"

"Her terrible twos are about to be upon us," Lucy said.

He nodded.

They all knew Yuri wasn't going to go back to sleep, so they brought their kids downstairs, allowing the noise they made to awaken the rest of the family. Makarov came down in his robe, and Chelia came down dressed with her camera.

Their children would probably have been considered 'spoiled' by most, but neither one of them was particularly fixated on things. Yuri and Layla liked each other, and to run and play and be with others. Having a close sibling instilled in them a love and consideration that made their parents proud, and they watched while their son stopped to help their daughter open her gifts too.

Once they'd unwrapped their gifts, they sat amongst the mess of ripped paper with their new toys and played excitedly

"We have good kids," Lucy said, snuggling against him as they watched from the couch.

A loud noise suddenly caused them both to jump and reflexes tuned to war and battle rose in both. Lucy reached for her keys which were currently on her nightstand in the bedroom as she was still wearing pajamas, and Laxus prepared to fry whoever was responsible. It was just Yuri, holding cap guns in each of his hands while he flew through the living room shooting.

Makarov almost passed out from laughing.

The nanny and both parents glared angrily.

There was no doubt as to who gave the boy such a noisy disaster of a gift. The gifts Makarov gave the kids tended to fall into one of a few categories: things that make noise, things that get stuck in the carpet or in their hair, things that stain, 'things that hurt like fuck when you step on them at 3 am trying to go downstairs for a snack,' and Lucy's personal unfavorite, 'things with wheels that make you fall and wonder if you broke your ass bone.'

Layla was meanwhile playing with a ball of play-dough when she decided to taste it. Her mother watched as her picky child who would not eat most of the food that was cooked for her try to eat a mouthful of the salty, neon-pink substance whilst her brother ran around the house like a maniac.

Yuri ran to Raijin's bed, where the tiger was lounging on her side, attempting to ignore the rustling of paper. The boy took aim and fired the cap guns at Raijin, exclaiming, "I got you!"

The tiger sat up, stared at Yuri, and then put her huge paw and pushed him down onto the floor. The tiger looked up at Laxus as if to say, 'Could you do something about your kid?'

"Yuri, leave Raijin alone. Tigers eat kids," Laxus warned.

"Ooof! You don't wanna play? That's okay. Sorry, sorry, let's be friends. You want some cereals?" he sweetly uttered from the carpet.

Raijin had never eaten one of the thousands of Cheerios Yuri had given her, yet the boy continued to put little piles of them wherever she slept.

Layla saw her brother turn and squealed, "Don't!"

Yuri pointed his little cap guns at his sister and she gave him a glare that was second in terror only to her mother's. "Okay, okay, I stop."

Makarov and Chelia and the parents had gifts too, and Lucy excitedly tore open a gift from her husband to find an ancient book on celestial spirit summoning magic.

Then Lucy brought her husband his gift as he sat on the couch and snuggled up to him. "I hope you like it."

Laxus was impossible to shop for because he really acted like he didn't want anything most of the time. He wasn't hung up on 'things,' and for the past few years of his life, had been content in his role as a husband and father. He didn't really collect anything and didn't have many pastimes between magic and babies.

Lucy watched as he tore the paper neatly along one seam, giving her a little grin. Everyone else was completely occupied with the children in their world of torn paper and toys and noise, so as they sat on the couch, no one was really paying them any attention.

There was a plain white box and when he opened it, there was a page torn out of the day-by-day calendar that sat on his desk at work. On the page she had written the words, 'Dreyar Twins Due,' with a little heart.

Laxus stared into the box for a long time, as if it was difficult for him to think that hard. Then he finally looked up with a peculiar expression of shock. "Lucy, are you pregnant?"

She nodded.

"With twins?"

Lucy laughed a little nervously. "So, you kind of won me over on the big family thing, I guess. And I knew you wanted another baby and I wanted to surprise you, so I went off birth control. I guess it was buy one get one free day in my ovaries. So, I hope you're serious about wanting a big family, because we're about to have four kids under the age of five at the same time."

Laxus abruptly pulled her across his lap and squeezed her tightly, a huge, excited smile on his face. "Wow...you are...I…"

He gave her a big kiss and she giggled. "I love you, Laxus."

"I love you too. How far along?"

"Eleven weeks."

His brows rose. "How long have you known you were pregnant?"

"Three weeks."

"You've been well so far?"

"Perfect. I read in a book twin pregnancies are supposed to be more difficult, but I've felt great."

Lucy didn't know if this was going to be an 'easy' pregnancy or if her body was just used to being knocked up, but she hadn't had any nausea or terrible symptoms so far. She knew when she missed her period he'd be suspicious at the first sign of vomit, but she'd somehow made it through almost the entire first trimester without the first trimester kind of 'feeling pregnant,' even with twins.

She decided not to question it since she'd been a serial puker during her first two pregnancies.

One thing that was different was that she'd had ravenous hunger on par with a dragon slayer's and had eaten probably more in the past month than in the three months before that put together, and in attempts to hide her pregnancy, she did most of her 'excess' eating in secret.

Laxus leaned in to smell her, and detected the just slight change in scent she had while pregnant. It was so subtle he had to know to look for it to pick up on it.

He was so stupidly happy he didn't even know what to do so he just held her.

He had a few fleeting thoughts about how difficult it was going to be to handle two newborns, a toddler, and...he wasn't sure what the designation for Yuri was. He had graduated from toddlerhood, and could hold a conversation, recite the alphabet, and was starting to develop something that resembled reason. He seemed to be growing out of the mischief of toddlerhood that caused him to test boundaries and was settling into the role of a very nice little boy. He was very helpful, and he loved his family. It was a good age.

Layla was somewhat outgrowing her more dramatic temper tantrums and was become slightly more social, although they were making sure the kids interacted with other kids often since one was terrified of girls and the other was just very shy and quiet. Under her shyness, she had a weird wild streak that seemed to come as she began light explorations of magic.

Their precious daughter made their way to her parents and climbed on the couch and attempted to hug both of her parents at the same time. "Mewwy Kisskiss!"

Lucy and Laxus each bent down to kiss-kiss her, and she attempted to climb onto her mother's lap as she was sitting on her dad.

Yuri looked up and unaware of the sweetness of this moment they were having, yelled, "Dog pile!" and slammed into them with surprising might, sending the whole operation tumbling over.

"Son!" Lucy said.

"We should squish Daddy," Yuri said.

"Stop it!" Layla exclaimed.

Laxus groaned because some hand or foot or elbow or knee had hit him in between the legs and while he huffed in recovery the women gave Yuri bad looks and righted themselves.

Layla exclaimed, "Stop being a boy!"

He was quite proud of himself, until a shock coursed through this body and made him twitch. "Owwww! What's that for?"

Laxus said, "Don't ever play rough with girls. Not your sister, or your mom, or other ones either. You understand?"

Yuri nodded.

"Apologize."

"I'm sorry, Mommy. I'm sorry, Layla," he begrudgingly uttered.

His sister said, "'S'okay. You can be a boy with Daddy."

She had learned this phrase 'be a boy' from her mother, and it was the blanket descriptive for all his very normal but very little boyish behavior.

One of the few traditions Laxus and Makarov had when Laxus was growing up was that every year, Makarov would make him pancakes on Christmas, and Laxus had felt so fond of this that he continued it with his kids. Now that his grandfather lived with them, the two men went to the kitchen to make breakfast and this felt right and good with both of them.

"This takes me back," Makarov said as he collected ingredients for a big breakfast from the refrigerator.

Laxus nodded as he found a bowl to mix the pancakes in.

"You have a real stupid look on your face, Grandson."

He smiled. "Lucy's pregnant, Gramps."

"Again?" he chuckled and smiled back.

Laxus added, "...with twins. No one in this house is getting any sleep come June."

"Twins? Really? How did that happen?"

He shrugged. "Apparently without my consent during the month of October. I've been wanting another baby for a while, and I think Lucy started feeling that way when Layla started to get her little independent streak. There's nothing my wife loves more than a chubby little baby face."

"If she likes a chubby face, she's got you," Makarov pinched a now-perceptible amount of fat on his once-perfect abdomen.

Laxus rolled his eyes. He'd recently noticed that some combination of office work, babies, and being married had led to a noticeable amount of fat on his body. He had the same amount of muscle, but it was just not quite as pronounced. He wasn't sure if he cared about it yet or not.

Makarov cracked some eggs into a bowl and asked, "Your wife is in fantastic shape. I'd never guess she was a mom of two kids. I'd think you carried the kids at this point."

His grandson answered, "I have a hard time taking criticism about my body from a grown man who is shorter than my three-year-old son."

"To be fair, he is a huge child. You were such a scrawny little mutt."

Laxus found it was nice to talk to people other than his wife at times. And other times, he missed when he and Lucy were living by themselves. It suddenly occurred to him that twins would make eight people in a four bedroom house. "Shit, I need to find a new house."

Makarov suggested, "There's a big lot for sale by the guild."

"Great, Gramps, so when the guild gets destroyed every three and a half years, I can be homeless too. There's a good reason no one builds anything on the same block as the guild. The idea of finding a patch of dirt somewhere and building a house is nice. Lucy would like that kind of thing. She's particular. She gives a shit whether the carpet is cream or ecru."

"What's ecru? Some kind of animal?"

"It's evidently another word for 'off-white.' It's a woman thing, I think. Like 'cerulean' and 'magenta.' And 'chartreuse.'"

"That last one sounds like a stripper's name."

"It's piss yellow," Laxus said.

Makarov had never been married so it was interesting to live with a married couple. His grandson had slowly over the years softened in a lot of ways, and become stronger in others. He was patient, and he enjoyed presiding over the chaos of young children which made him quite qualified for guild master.

Breakfast was marked by excited squeals and thank yous, then came stockings full of candy and trinkets.

They watched the kids play throughout the day and when it was time for them to go to bed, the kids piled into Yuri's bed for their bedtime story.

When Lucy finished reading the story of the little red dragon for what felt like the thousandth time, Laxus came and leaned against the doorway with a contented smile.

"You ready to tell them?" he asked.

She nodded.

Lucy said, "Layla, you remember how I told you that you used to be in my tummy?"

She nodded.

"Yuri, you remember before she was born, right?"

"Your belly was so big!" he exclaimed.

Lucy ruffled his hair. "Well, our family is going to grow again just like that."

Yuri looked down. "You gots a person in you again?"

"Yes, son," she laughed, "Well, this time, I have two babies inside of me."

Layla snuggled close. "Babies?"

Yuri had communicated on several occasions that he enjoyed his status as the only son, so he seemed a little suspicious. "Two babies…"

Laxus said, "They could both be boys. A little brother would be good for you. Two would be better."

"No," he simply answered.

Layla seemed to have more trouble with the idea that there would be more children in the family.

Lucy went to their bedroom for a photo album, and showed Layla pictures of her while pregnant and then with her when she was a newborn. The girl warmed up gradually to the idea of her mother being pregnant and Yuri was happy about it as long as neither of the babies were boys.

Layla held out her doll. "You gonna have a real baby?"

"Two of them."

"Can I play with your babies?"

Lucy nodded. "Of course. They'll be your brothers and sisters and you can be a good big sister, okay?"

"When?"

"The babies will have to grow and then they'll be born in the summer."

Yuri thought long and hard about all this and then said, "Mama, ask Gams to make the babies huge so they can come out now!"

"That's not how it works, son," Laxus said.

Once the kids were in bed, they headed to their room and Lucy snuggled up to her dragon, who put a hand on her still flat belly, amazed it was still flat as she'd had a little bump by that time in her second pregnancy.

"I bet you're going to get enormous."

"Ugh, not looking forward to that. Sometimes you see a lady with twins and she's so big you think, 'God, what happened to her.' And now it has happened to me," she answered,

Laxus lectured her about making sure she got enough food and sleep, but this was their third time around and everyone knew what was going down. He was sure their twins found the womb well broken-in and cozy from prior occupants.

Lucy said, "I have this weird feeling this is the last time I'm going to be pregnant."

"Four is a good number, I think."

"So, we have a son and daughter already. What's your preference?"

Laxus considered this for a minute. "It might be easier if they're the same sex because raising a boy and raising a girl are two completely different things. Then again, if we have a boy and a girl, we'll have two and two. I feel like two boys would be kind of a handful. Two girls would tip the estrogen scales a bit much. There would be two of us and three of you."

Lucy pinched his cheek. "I think it would be super cute to see you raising a bunch of little girls. I'm with you on the twin boys thing. Two like Yuri at the same time? Yikes."

"You want to build a house?"

"Really?"

Her husband nodded. "We don't really have a place to put two babies right now. I know a stone-make wizard who will make it out of stone, like a little fortress. Should cut down on construction time also. It's kind of cramped here and I want to be able to have loud sex with you again."

"That'll be fun for us to do together, getting to pick everything out."

"Do whatever you want. I don't care. At all. I'm a wizard, I'm comfortable eating, sleeping, and shitting in the woods. Besides, the last thing I picked for this house was the tiger rug, and we all know how that went. I believe you made me give it up for the privilege of impregnating you with our son."

Lucy smiled at the memory of her victory. "What if we still had the rug, but were childless?"

"I'm almost that stubborn."

"I don't think we'd have had as much fun without kids. I think we'd still be together and whatever, and probably have gone on more vacations, spent more money on ourselves, and developed a lot of pointless suburban hobbies, but it wouldn't be the same. I can't imagine a world without our babies," she said.

XXX

The next Monday, Lucy came in to work an hour after her husband, who left her sleeping in the bed while he fed the kids and left.

There, under her desk, was the rug. It was even worse than she remembered as it lay there in a most obscene way with it's furry orange and black tiger print pattern. It matched nothing in the office, and honestly didn't belong anywhere, ever.

He smirked at her.

"I thought...you said...didn't we get rid of this?"

Laxus smiled even wider. "I actually rolled it up and put it in the attic. I forgot all about it until we talked about it and I thought it would make a nice addition to the office."

Lucy cringed, inwardly then outwardly. "And why is it under my desk?"

"Well, you stand when you're sorting the mail, and I thought the extra padding would be good for your back."

The blonde sat down at her desk and glared at him. "And there were no other rugs, anywhere in Fiore?"

"Excuse me for trying to help."

When Laxus had to go to a meeting at the bank, Lucy called for Natsu.

"Oy, Mrs. Master, what's up?" he teased.

Lucy said, "Look, I'll buy you lunch if you turn this rug to ash."

Natsu looked down at it. "It's kinda nice. Are you sure you want to burn it?"

"Look, Laxus said he brought it in here because I'm pregnant, but really, he's just trying to get on my nerves."

Natsu's jaw dropped a little. "You're pregnant again? Do you ever tell him no? Because, I hear 'no' a lot and then I wonder if that's normal, but every time I turn around you're pregnant."

"Telling Laxus no is like throwing a grenade at a beehive. Never really works the way I hope."

"And you usually get stuck anyway?"

Lucy's voice was dripping with sarcasm as she pretended to laugh. "So will you burn it or not? I got five hundred pages with everything you'll burn for no reason, so I know you shouldn't need much encouragement."

"Can I have it instead? I think it would look good in our living room."

She brought a palm to her face. "Is every dragon slayer male tacky and weird? Please just trust me that this is an awful, tasteless thing. Lisanna decorated your home beautifully. In shades of blue and gray. Not orange!"

After an argument, Natsu gave in.

When Laxus returned, the first thing he noticed was that the tiger rug was gone. "What did you…" He trailed off when he saw a handful of ashes in the shape of a heart on his desk.

Lucy smiled at him. "Oh, by the way, we owed Natsu lunch and I left my wallet at home, so I put on your tab. Please don't forget to settle it before we go home."

"You ruin all my fun."

"It's sad Laxus, that at this point in your life 'all your fun' consists of terrorizing your wife with a tasteless, ugly-ass rug that looks like it was woven from the pubic hair of one of Zeref's demons."

"I feel like you set me up for a good END joke here," Laxus muttered.

"You better not!"

Laxus sighed and said, "You never let me have any fun at work."

"Laxus, we conceived the twins on your desk. If that doesn't boost your workplace morale, I don't even know what to do with you at this point."

Her husband flashed a devilish grin. "I have a few ideas."

"Please don't write anything dirty on the calendar. It's embarrassing when I'm trying to show someone our upcoming events and you have pencilled in 'afternoon delight' on every day at 4 pm."

"That's the best time."

Lucy groaned. "Why do I put up with you?"

"Once you go Lax, you never go back."

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