It was eleven o'clock in the morning, and Lucy drowsily opened her eyes, smiled, and closed them again, snuggling up to her sleeping dragon. They'd never been away from the kids at the same time for an overnight period, and since they'd been raising newborns and toddlers for the past four years, they had shared chronic exhaustion.
Laxus asked her a thousand questions about where she wanted to go and then realized all either of them really wanted to do was lay around and do the absolute sum of nothing. They'd spent the last three days sleeping, making love, eating room service, taking an occasional walk along the beach, watching beautiful sunsets, most of which were things he'd found lame and boring in years past.
He never understood why anyone would take such a lame, un-exciting vacation until he had kids and serious job responsibilities that amounted to more than going different places and beating up people for money.
His children had different attitudes toward the idea of his parents sleeping which he would describe as follows:
Yuri - "It's six am, I'm hungry and I want to fight."
Layla - "I will crawl in your bed and sleep in with you until noon."
Anna - "Sorry to interrupt your sleep, but I need snuggles."
Mavis - "Get up and hold me while I act like I don't like it or I'll scream until you go deaf."
These attitudes led to seriously disturbed parental sleeping patterns.
Besides,it was nice to spend a few days with just his wife.
So when he woke up at noon, he let out a long, contented sigh and looked down at Lucy, who was sleeping peacefully next to him, bathed in sunlight. Long, golden hair, pretty, smooth skin, gorgeous curves...Time was good to her, and her face looked a lot kinder and softer with the years they'd been married.
When she awoke, they ordered room service, and while they waited, they showered and Lucy put on some black lingerie and heels. She got right back into the bed, laying on her stomach with her feet up, head rested in her hand as he settled in beside her.
"I miss the kids."
He grinned and stretched his arm out to run his fingers through her hair. "You're such a good little mommy."
"You too. With all these little girls, you're too cute. I was thinking the other day about when I first got pregnant with Yuri and you told me we'd have nothing but little boys because a girl hadn't been born into your family for so long," she said.
Her husband shrugged. "I think it's best that way. If we had one girl and a bunch of boys it would be a hassle. We'd have to rebuild our house every other Tuesday. Although, if all our girls are like Layla, maybe that's just going to be how it is for us. I'd prefer they be fierce."
"Oh?"
"I'd like for them to be like you. Mean and smart as fuck."
Lucy climbed on top of him, roughly kneeing him in the abdomen. "Mean, huh?"
"Don't play with me, little girl. You know I like to get rough."
They wrestled, and he felt like she had an unfair advantage because stilettos were basically just very impractical weapons. Lucy was a flexible little thing and she knew how to leverage those heels against him in a way that hurt so good.
She giggled and bit his bottom lip when there was a knock on the door.
"Room service!"
Laxus threw the comforter over her and pulled on a pair of pants. "We will resume this after champagne and strawberries."
"Or during," she purred.
A cart was brought in with steaks and vegetables and all sorts of other delicious fare, and the attendant set it out on their little table, opened the champagne, and left them alone again.
Lucy did what she'd gotten so used to doing and went to both plates and cut the steaks up into tiny bites while her husband watched in amusement. Yuri had no problem with uncut meat, but Lucy cut up his food because he had a brute of a dragon in him and would gladly pick up a hunk of meat and eat with his bare hands. Layla was finicky and only took small bites.
Neither of them was ready for a knife.
"Babe."
"Eh?"
Lucy looked down and sighed. "Things that become habit when you are raising small children…"
"I'm a big boy, I take big bites."
They ate and then returned to the bed with chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne.
"I wonder how long alcohol stays in the body. I don't really want to get home tomorrow and get the babies drunk," Lucy said.
Laxus said, "Gramps used to get me to sleep by putting whiskey on my pacifier. I turned out okay. Besides, I bet they'd sleep well. Especially Mavis. Happy little drunk baby dragon."
Lucy drank from the bottle and offered it to him. "You know, I kind of like you."
"I like you too. You wanna get married and have some babies? Oh, we already did that."
His wife grinned. "I can't wait for the S-Class trials. I kind of hope I get Juvia. I think it would be fun. I definitely don't want to end up against Gildarts."
"That rusty old ginger won't bother you because you're almost the same age as his daughter. He practically get Levy skate past him and then claimed she outsmarted him. Of the S-Class wizards you might run into, Natsu, Freed, Gray, and Gildarts are going to go easy on you. Juvia will be fair. I'll bring ice packs in case you draw Erza."
"What about Mira?"
"Her baby will be...four months old? Might stop her, might not. Mirajane has always been a little unpredictable. I have a vision of her holding a baby in one hand and kicking Romeo's ass with the other. God, let that happen, please."
Lucy fed him a strawberry, which he was more than happy to eat. He was always oddly aroused when she fed him, and he wasn't entirely sure why.
Actually, pretty much everything she did made him happy, drove him crazy, or made him want to bent her over the nearest hard surface.
Life was good, and five years in, they couldn't have been happier.
XXX
When Laxus and Lucy arrived back in town the next day, there was a newspaper about Fairy Tail destroying half of Dandelion, so the guildmaster groaned.
"I'm going to the guild for a minute. Let Gramps and Chelia know I'll get Yuri on the way home. Be back as soon as I can."
The lightning dragon slayer walked to the guild, kicked all of the appropriate asses, checked the appropriate boxes on the appropriate forms, and answered an inquiry from the Council. He honestly didn't even know why they bothered to ask anymore. He imagined there were bureaucrats employed solely to handle the government paperwork related to Natsu and Gray.
He was half an hour late picking his son up, so when he arrived, the kids whose parents had a bad sense of time or a great sense of neglect were playing on the playground under the teacher's care.
Yuri was pushing a little girl on the swing, and it was cute.
She had long lilac-colored hair and big blue eyes, and she seemed happy with Yuri at the moment, giggling and urging him to push her higher.
So he pushed her so hard she fell off the swing and went face-down into the dirt, and when she sat up to start crying, the swing came back and hit her in the face.
The girl started screaming and crying hysterically, and Yuri knelt and tried to comfort her, offering the sincerest of apologies, to which she replied with, "I hate you! Go away!"
Yuri then realized his father was there and gave him a confused expression, which Laxus replied to by gesturing for his son to come to him.
"There's such a thing as having no game at all, and then there's that. Honestly, son, you've got to be more gentle. Girls are delicate," his father said.
His son sighed sadly. "She sat with Tony at lunch. He's short and he can't spell his own name. He eats glue."
Laxus ruffled his hair and knelt, deciding to help his poor helpless son a bit. He obviously wasn't making anything work to his advantage and it was a father's honor to teach his son to treat women well. He said, "Let me teach you something really important about girls. Before a girl will make friends with you, she has to be happy. You have to find out what she likes, and make her happy."
"How do I do that?"
He looked over, "See her backpack, what is it?"
"A cat."
"And her earrings?"
"Cats."
"Headband?"
"Cat ears."
Laxus said, "So, we know she likes cats."
"Ummmm…I think?"
"She likes cats. You have a pet tiger. Short Tony who can't spell his own name ain't got nothin' on you," Laxus said.
Because really, what was worse than being illiterate and tigerless?
Yuri considered this for quite a while and once the girl stopped crying, made his way back to her as she sat on a bench. Laxus couldn't hear what he said, but the girl forgot she hated his guts and jumped off the bench, and when her mom arrived to get her, she asked her mom if she could 'go play.'
Parents negotiated, Laxus agreed to let her father pick her up at the Dreyar house as it was 'his weekend.' The spoke about the girl's father in a tone one might speak of an unfortunate and highly embarrassing rash.
Laxus was looking forward to seeing his wife's face when she saw their son brought a little girl home. He considered it fair game since she enjoyed how much he disliked the little dragon boys coming over to play with Layla. He was excited to repeat things that had been told to him like: "get over it," "grow up," and "they're just kids, chill out, will you?"
On the way home, he observed them carefully, and found she didn't talk very much. Yuri didn't talk much either, so they mostly just walked in silence.
"Your dad is really big."
"I'm going to be really big like him too someday. Probably bigger, cause he doesn't drink his milk. My dad is a wizard. He's the best," Yuri answered.
"My dad's a wizard too."
Laxus knew there was something familiar about her scent, but he couldn't place it. Sometimes he wished he had Natsu's sense of scent memory as Natsu could remember the smell of some random guy that bumped into him at the tram ten years ago. Laxus could barely remember the scents of people he met last week.
Laxus asked, "What is your last name?"
"Eucliffe."
He turned, knelt, and stared at her. She looked just like Sting, just with light purple hair and in little girl form. And when he tried hard enough, he could sense there was a ton of magic sealed up in her little body, probably to prevent anyone from smelling or sensing she had dragon blood. That would be dangerous, as she clearly didn't live with her father.
His little dragon had unwittingly crossed paths with a little girl dragon. Yuri might not have had active knowledge that she was like him, but his dragon instincts were as sharp as ever.
Sting hadn't mentioned having a love child in Magnolia, but then again, Laxus wasn't sure where in the agenda of the local guildmasters meetings that might fall.
Laxus was so incredibly amused by all of this he couldn't help but smirk because in two to three hours, Sting Eucliffe was going to show up at his house and learn the son of the Fairy Tail guild master had successfully wooed his daughter into a play date.
He couldn't wait.
At the house, he let the kids in and announced, "Lucy, our son has a friend over."
Then, he went upstairs to see his precious little baby girls.
Lucy came out of the kitchen, where she was studying magic and cooking dinner at the same time and instead of seeing another little boy, there was a pretty little girl with a cat backpack. "A girl…"
She wasn't the only blonde that was upset by this, as Layla typically counted down the time until her brother came home from school so they could play together. Layla was more than a little disappointed that Yuri brought some other girl to play with.
Laxus felt sorry for all his son's future girlfriends, as Yuri had a mother and three sisters. Even the twins were possessive about Yuri and would cry if he was paying attention to only one of them.
Layla stalked and sulked, watching from the railing upstairs, and Laxus, finding the twins asleep, decided to leave them alone and annoy his oldest daughter instead.
She was very busy being pissed off did take time out of her wrath to hug him and tell him she missed him, but then she said, "I don't like her."
"Oh? Why not?"
"Just because."
Her father said, "I think that you're sad your brother is playing with her and not you."
"Why would he play with her?"
Laxus said, "Maybe he wants to."
Layla responded to this with the silent treatment.
Laxus sat next to her on the floor and said, "When you start school, you're going to make your own friends too."
"I'm the sister. She's a dumb girl."
"Don't be mean, princess. She's just here to play. He'll be your brother forever."
She was unconvinced and stomped down the hall.
"Where are you going?"
Layla stuck her nose in the air. "To play alone!"
Meanwhile, Yuri and Lilia sat down in the living room on Raijin's bed with the tiger, and while the girl hugged on the tiger and felt her silky fur and how big and warm she was, Yuri told her all about growing up with a tiger friend.
Yuri was quite happy and had no idea that he had hell to pay with the other women in his life.
Lucy meanwhile was in the kitchen, chopping an onion about ten times harder than was necessary.
"They're just kids," her husband teased when he came downstairs.
Lucy pointed the knife at him. "That's what you and Yuri have been talking about in secret, isn't it? Keeping secrets from me. If you remember, he came out of my body, not yours."
Laxus said, "Do you want me to tell you how much sense you are not making right now?"
"You better not, Laxus Dreyar. Besides, I'm fine. Unlike you, I don't need to be childish. If our son wants to have a girl who is his friend, that's fine."
"Do I need to explain the difference between girl who is a friend and girlfriend?"
She glared at him. "I feel like you are really enjoying this."
"This is the most fun I've had since well, the past few days were just the best thing ever. The best part hasn't even happened yet. By the way, where the hell is Gramps? And Chelia for that matter…"
Lucy said, "As soon as I got home, they decided to leave. They are running bets out of a local pub these days. I will never understand their partnership."
When dinner was ready, Lucy was a little alarmed by how polite and proper Yuri was at the table. He was normally a mess, and a brute, and really just didn't see the need for eating utensils. It was the first time they'd gotten through a meal without her having to say, "use your fork."
Layla stared daggers into Lilia Eucliffe, who either didn't notice or pretended it wasn't happening. The jealous three-year-old pushed her food around with her fork, preferring dispensing dirty looks to eating good food.
Lucy knew what her daughter was obviously irrationally envious, and said, "Stop, Layla. Eat your food."
"I'm not hungry."
They went back and forth for a while, and the little blonde reluctantly ate, although she made it clear to all she was very unhappy.
When the doorbell rang at eight-thirty, Laxus felt nothing short of joyous anticipation as he opened it and found Sabertooth guildmaster Sting Eucliffe there to claim his daughter. He had a piece of paper with the Dreyar address written on it, and he was already annoyed.
What was worse than showing up to get his daughter for the one weekend he had her a month and finding out her mother let her go to a strange family's house?
When that strange family was the Dreyars.
Lucy came in the living room to see what why her husband was looking forward to anyone coming to their house. Normally, he despised anyone visiting.
Sting looked up. "I think there's been a mistake."
"You looking for a kid?"
"I swear to God, if that woman let my kid come over here…"
Lucy pointedly asked, "What's wrong with our family?"
Sting got a little nervous when she asked that. If it had only been him and Laxus, he would have felt free to give him an itemized list of things he didn't like about the Dreyars which would inevitably end in electrocution like most of his encounters with Laxus did. The idea of pissing Lucy Dreyar off was considerably scarier.
Instead, he opted to go the safe route, and looked around to find his daughter had fallen asleep snuggled up to a tiger next to a little boy that looked like a miniaturized version of the rival guildmaster.
"Please tell me that thing isn't real."
Raijin raised her head and he jumped and snatched his daughter. "Why is there a tiger in your house? Don't you have like thirteen kids?"
Laxus sarcastically replied, "We probably wouldn't have to keep having babies if the tiger would stop eating them. And we only have four now. Thanks for being insensitive."
The girl was groggy and cranky. "Raijin is my friend!"
Sting said, "That is a tiger. Tigers eat kids."
She struggled until he dropped her and she landed on her feet in true dragon fashion. "I want to say goodbye to my friend."
Lucy watched her run back and hug on the tiger. "Sting, since when do you have a kid?"
"I had been living with this girl a few years ago and she got tired of me and moved back here with her family. I got a letter in the mail last year telling me I had a three-year-old daughter with a magic problem. Minerva sealed her magic up. I can't really do anything for her since I only get to see her one weekend a month," he said.
She answered, "Magnolia is full of dragons. I'm sure we could help if her magic was unsealed."
Sting despised the idea of needing Fairy Tail's assistance to raise his daughter and said, "So, is that your son?"
"That's my boy," she said.
"...and my daughter. Disgusting."
Lucy pointed at Sting. "Is my son disgusting to you?"
"No, uhhh…" he nervously spattered.
Then she laughed, "Just kidding. We have three girls, I have to deal with this crap with Laxus all day long."
Lilia finally let go of the tiger, told Yuri goodnight, and went to take her father's hand. "Can't I spend the night?"
Sting cringed. "Lilia, that's something you can do with your friends who are girls."
Laxus said, "I have a question though."
"What," the other dragonslayer answered in a tone that clearly said, 'Why don't you just drop dead?'
"Are you sure about wearing belly shirts when you have a daughter? You don't want her to think showing some skin is the only way to get ahead, do you? Might have gotten you guildmaster at a young age, but you really should set a better example," Laxus teased.
Lucy sighed. "Laxus. Enough. Geeze, you two are ridiculous."
Sting didn't even know how to describe how unhappily surprised he was that his normally shy daughter made friends with a boy. And not just any boy, but the heir apparent to the Fairy Tail throne, the guildmaster's first born son.
And Laxus' kid at that. Laxus was one of maybe five people he couldn't defeat in battle, and it was a source of ire for him. Watching the lightning dragon slayer smirk about his son's favor with his daughter just made him want to try again, but he didn't want to get his ass kicked in front of his kid.
It was all so insulting.
Sting left with his daughter, and for the entire walk back to the train station, all he heard about was Yuri Dreyar: how Yuri is taller than all the other boys in class, how Yuri shares his snacks, how Yuri can make sparks come out of his hands and mouth, how strong Yuri is, how Yuri's parents let him have a pet tiger, how soft Yuri's hair is even though it stands up...it was ridiculous and sickening that any offspring of his could be so ridiculously smitten by little mini-Laxus.
And he knew that smug lightning bastard was basking in it too.
As a father, even one that wasn't experienced, of course he wanted to threaten and scare the little rascal, but he couldn't do that without aggravating Yuri's parents.
Meanwhile at home, Yuri was very happy. As he grew older, he had a less and less extreme range of emotions, but he seemed quite pleased he'd finally befriended the creature of interest.
The next morning was a fairly normal Saturday. Well...sort of.
Layla made it through breakfast without saying a word to her brother, who was blissfully ignorant she was even mad at him. He did notice his mom give him a funny look once or twice, but he went back to his pancakes.
"Layla, let's go play outside. You want to?"
Silence.
"Layla?"
She had a pretty serious game face for a three-year-old and maintained while she literally acted like he did not exist.
Lucy finally said, "Layla was sad you played with your friend. She was waiting for you to come home yesterday so you can play with her and you could play puppets for the babies."
"She didn't want to play with us?" he asked in confusion.
Laxus folded up his newspaper. "That's just not how girls work, son."
"I'm sorry?" Yuri muttered in question.
He wasn't really sure what he did wrong, but one thing he'd learned in a house filled with girls was that 'I'm sorry' went a long way. He said it often, often preemptively, as a cautionary measure, or to lessen the wrath directed toward him.
"S'okay," Layla said, seemingly accepting his apology.
The parents thought the two had worked out their little problem, until Layla added, "Never bring her here again."
"What if she wants to visit RaiRai?" her brother asked.
"I said no," his little sister answered.
Yuri really didn't know what to say to that, so he went back to eating.
Layla was fine too, as she'd made her point.
Laxus sipped his coffee and gave his daughter a somewhat tired expression.
They went to play 'magic' in the backyard after breakfast, a game they were only allowed to play under the watchful care of their parent wizards or grandfather. They each had the ability to injure the other, but so far, nothing terrible had happened. Magic was an issue of the heart, and they loved one another.
But he'd checked, no one else's kids threw balls of lightning or light at each other.
So laid in a hammock with a beer and two sleepy babies and watched his older babies chase each other all over the yard so happily he was sure he'd be able to get them down for a nap.
It was fun for them, and it helped them hone their aim and abilities.
Just watching them, Laxus suspected his grandfather was right about Layla having some insane amount of dormant magic potential in her. On paper, she was smarter than her brother was, but he'd had relatively good common sense from birth. She benefitted from her emotional volatility in some ways, and he benefitted from being so stable.
He was strong and well coordinated, and she was amazingly agile for an age where her balance was supposed to be terrible. Laxus had never considered his grandfather's cat-like fighting style might have descended from his magic, but he could see it pretty clearly.
Learning to use magic at a young age would pretty much irreversibly change how their bodies grew and operated, but that was always inevitable and it would have been ridiculous to try and postpone something that would only benefit them in the end.
Mavis was exceptionally fussy and upon cursory inspection, he found a fang trying to break through her gum on the bottom right side. On the other side, there was a bump saying she'd soon have fangs in an otherwise toothless mouth.
"Hey, you need to grow human teeth too. Your mom is going to quit feeding you over that little fang and then what? You can't chew with a fang, especially not two on the bottom."
She responded by gumming him with her soft little baby mouth.
"You can't bite me. I made you."
Anna made a happy baby noise and wiggled a little to try and get closer.
"Nice baby. Mean baby. One wants to bite, one wants to snuggle. You're terrible twins. You don't really look alike, you don't act alike, you don't always enjoy being together...and we can't even dress you alike between one of you weighs half what the other does," he complained.
They seemed content despite his playful complaints and went right to sleep.
Lucy came outside for the babies after an hour and found them sleeping sounding on their father's broad chest. "You really are cuter with babies."
She leaned down and froze. "Don't move."
"Is there a bug?" he asked.
Lucy leaned down and stuck her fingers in his hair, then plucked a single hair out and showed it to him. "Look what I found."
Her husband looked up in question. "You found a hair. On my head. This is interesting and surprising for what reason?"
"Look closer."
Laxus squinted and then opened his eyes widely at the little white hair. It wasn't even gray, but bright white and shiny.
Lucy sifted through his hair and found there were actually quite a few peppered in near his temples. She was sure they would have noticed long before if his hair wasn't so light to start with. "You're a cute old guy."
A few months shy of thirty, Laxus was not pleased with this development.
"My dad's hair didn't turn white at all."
Lucy took Anna first. "Are you actually saying you wish you'd inherited your looks from him? You look like your grandfather. So it makes sense."
This bothered him more than anything, and late that night, when he was checking to make sure all the doors were locked, he found his grandfather writing in a notebook at the kitchen table.
"Gramps."
"Yes, grandson?"
Laxus asked, "How old were you when your hair started to turn white?"
Makarov thought about it for a long time and snapped his fingers. "About your age, now that I…"
He burst out laughing and climbed up on the table and grabbed Laxus by the collar, pulling him down to eye level. "Let's see, it started right about..here. By the time I was thirty-five, it was all white. Between fifty and sixty, most of it fell out. So look on the bright side. If you don't like white hair, soon you won't have any at all!" he explained with a deep chuckle.
Laxus loved his hair, and was a little disturbed by the future presented before him that involved premature graying followed by male pattern baldness.
When he went upstairs to shower, he examined the hair washing down the drain and questioned - was there more than normal?
He combed his hair afterward, and noted the shedding.
A wet white hair stuck to the comb, as if mocking him.
Lucy came to the bathroom door. "Suddenly, I realize you're a little vain. Everyone will still love you with white hair."
"And when it falls out?"
"Oh hell no. I'm out if you go bald," she sarcastically answered.
He gave her a certain kind of look and she squealed and ran, diving onto the bed to grab a pillow as he chased. She beat him up with a pillow and then sat on top of him, running her hands through his hair.
"What are you doing?"
"Enjoying it while I can."
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