Sam Redfox did not want to be where he was, standing at the doors to Fairy Tail.
He'd come in from an assignment in the east after two weeks to find out his wife had gone on a job with her older brother. Worst of all, when the job had been finished, she'd left another note saying she'd gone back home to visit her family for 'a few days.'
But she'd taken all Makarov Dreyars journals with her. They were to her living situation what clothes and underwear were to someone else. If they were gone, she wasn't planning on coming home anytime soon.
Layla was too obstinate to leave on her own, and her parents didn't meddle with their marriage. Yuri was his own person though, and if his sister wasn't happy, he wasn't happy.
Sam was sure that Yuri had talked her into coming home for a while. He viewed this as sabotage and generally unacceptable interference. Siblings shouldn't get involved with marriage; it seemed like something that would only make everything worse.
When he stepped in the doors, he stared at everyone and everyone looked back down at him.
There were new members he didn't recognize, old members who were stunned to see him standing there, and more than a few that weren't happy about his reappearance.
Up top, on the balcony, were the young 'titans' of Laxus Dreyar's Fairy Tail:
Yuri and Layla Dreyar and Petri Nekkis, the son of the Magic Council Chairman who made his own way to Fairy Tail during the upheaval years before.
Petri was Layla's first real boyfriend, the first guy she'd done a lot of stuff with, and while that hadn't ended particularly well, it was the longest she spent with anyone else. Their relationship had been somewhat famous, because they were famous. Petri was charismatic and well-known for being wild, and she was the gorgeous and powerful heir to all that was Makarov Dreyar.
Even Sorcerer's Weekly had a little gossip post written by another wizard implying Layla had somehow blown it big time dumping Petri only to ultimately marry Sam later on.
So seeing the three of them sitting together and having an apparently okay morning made his stomach turn. It also made him so angry he was about to march up there and do something about it when his father grabbed him by the ear.
"Oy, don't start trouble. You're on thin ice in these parts as it is. If you come here and tear up the guild over a lover's quarrel, you're going to make it worse."
Sam pulled away. "I'm not a child, Dad."
Gajeel, now gray at his temples, said, "To a parent, a child is always a child, no matter how old."
Sam immediately suspected maybe his father had been hanging around for the sole purpose of preventing his son from showing up and causing problems. This was embarrassing, and fueled insecurities he long felt he'd outgrown.
This was the problem with Magnolia; it made him feel like the worst version of himself. The town reminded him of every fault he didn't have to deal with as Captain Redfox, and every insecurity that drove him toward every mistake. He'd hurt the guild in the past, and not everyone had forgotten about it.
As a grown man, he didn't feel like those insecurities were supposed to be there. He was successful and happy living what was basically his second life in a bustling, beautiful city that was so far removed from his past he simply never had to think about it.
The part of him that maybe always wanted to come home was excited by the idea when he'd first married Layla, but the reality was terrifying and unpleasant.
When he looked up, Layla was standing at the edge of the rail, looking down at him as if she really wasn't happy to see him standing there.
His own wife didn't want to be around him, and this was the moment he realized how bad things really were.
And then she took a few steps back from the rail and walked off, heading to one of the upstairs classrooms where older wizards took turns teaching the guild kids. It was something she loved doing, and something she'd missed during her time with him.
The upstairs was reserved for guild members only, because the guild archives, offices, classrooms, and job boards were all upstairs. The expansive downstairs area was more or less a public space where wizards from other guilds stopped in while traveling, or even traders trying to sell magic objects or people who just wanted to eat there and buy t-shirts or stuffed animals.
Sam already knew there were runes that would keep someone without a mark from even walking up the stairs because Layla told him she and Freed had created them.
So, even if he wanted to make a scene, he'd hit a wall, and anyone who thought they could get past Freed's runes was simply an idiot.
Besides, his father-in-law and guildmaster was sitting at a table downstairs drinking coffee with Natsu. They let the kids fight and work out rivalries, but violence between the adults was met with swift action.
Laxus found the entire affair to be like watching a terrible accident happen in slow motion. Of course, running off and eloping was a terrible idea. No one was surprised Sam and Layla were having a hard time, but the parents collectively agreed they needed to work it out on their own.
He'd nearly talked Yuri's ears off for involving himself and convincing his sister to come home. He'd seen Makarov's journals and came to the same conclusion as Sam; if she stopped to get them, she wasn't planning on going back for a while, if at all.
Laxus watched Sam and Gajeel, frowned at his coffee, and said, "Kids are such a pain in the ass."
Natsu offered a sagely nod. "You remember when you were young, and kind of an idiot, but because you were an idiot, you didn't know you were an idiot?"
"Everyone was a teenager once. Was it nice? For the life of me, I can't remember whether or not I enjoyed being that age. On one hand, it was a miserable time in my life. Going on jobs, getting beat up trying to get stronger, but I truly believed that I knew everything, that I was better than everyone else, and seemed to assume I was immortal."
"I can't wait for them to just yell at each other and get over it like always. They've got half the guild gossiping and sharing opinions. Layla and Sam don't listen to advice."
Laxus looked back down at his crossword puzzle, wondering why his wife wasn't there to help him fill in the eighty percent of it he felt she was naturally responsible for as his partner, and shrugged. "Once, when Layla was a toddler, she argued, threw a fit, and held her breath until she passed out while arguing with me about whether or not she'd get wet if she went out in the rain."
"How did it go?"
"She went outside anyway and came in ten minutes later soaked and crying because the rain 'made her hair ugly.' There's something about her that's naturally very irrational. Sam has always had the weird ability to stir up the part of my daughter that doesn't make any sense. She wouldn't have run off with anyone else in this world."
If Gajeel kept Sam from turning the guild into a beehive of rage, that was enough. All the involved parents to the contentions Sam-Layla marriage discussed what was going on thoroughly and ultimately concluded they didn't really know what was happening. There were some theories, but no one really knew.
When Layla finally did come down from upstairs, she wasn't in a good mood.
Sam was waiting for her, patiently, or at least as patiently as he could manage.
She approached the table where he was sitting and asked, "What are you doing here, Sam?"
"What do you think? I came home and you were gone. I just had some note saying you were going for a while. You can't just do that."
Layla sat down and said, "I needed some time to think. I need time to think."
"Think about what? Whether or not you even want to come home?"
Layla leaned in and answered, "All we do is fight. When we're not fighting, it's because we're not talking to each other."
"You can't be the one who starts all the fights and then complain about how we're always fighting. Or feuding with me and then fighting about feuding. We go from silence to yelling and then things are fine for ten seconds and it's right back. We'd be doing a lot better if you'd just settle down."
Layla felt her temper flare up again and said, "Of course I'm the one who starts the fights. You're the one who has everything they want in this relationship. I hate living in Crocus. I'm too far from my family, from my work, and the only people I really see on a daily basis are the high society people who don't understand anything about who or what I am. I'm not just your wild and noisy wife, I had a whole life before you came along, and now I suddenly don't."
The knight was annoyed with her too, because as far as he was concerned, he'd given her everything she could possibly want except one single thing. Layla had always been spoiled, always had everything that she wanted, and she hadn't ever had to grow out of that. She was born pretty and powerful, into the most influential magic bloodline in Fiore.
Sam said, "You can have anything you want, do anything you want. You don't even have to work if you don't want to."
Layla answered, "Sam, I'm not a door post. If you wanted a girl like that, Crocus is full of them. I didn't marry you because I needed security or a future and you were the only way for me to have that. The only thing I ever wanted from you is you, but you're asking me to give up the things that make me who I am. And I…I can't."
Sam leaned on the table and asked, "What about the things that make me who I am? Magnolia just reminds me of everything that went wrong, and everything that's wrong with me. It's like there are two separate worlds. In one I'm a knight, someone who is respected, and no one even thinks about the rest. But I come home, and I'm still the same old person."
"We can't live in two separate worlds and be married, Sam. We simply can't. You don't want to come live in my world, and I don't want to stay in yours. I was thinking maybe we could try to be long-distance. I'll be here, and you'll be there, and we can see each other when we can."
Her husband's frown only deepened as they reached this point. "So one of us has to give up or we aren't going to stay together."
Layla was quiet for a while, but said, "That's how I felt at first. Like I would leave because I didn't want to be stuck in Crocus forever and I wanted to live my life. But then when we were on our job we were up north, everything was cold and white and clear to me. I don't think it would be good for either of us to give up our careers and what makes us happy."
One of the problems with this whole situation was that Sam was never clear on what she wanted. He wondered at times what kind of person she would have grown up to be if she wasn't so seriously anchored to her family, and had come to understand that those connections and her ambitions kept her grounded. In Crocus, she was isolated from her family and her career.
The months of fighting were wearing her down, and he'd thought maybe it was a sign of progress, like if they fought enough, they'd get tired of being at odds and get along. Now he knew this was a mistake. She wasn't getting ready to compromise, she was getting ready to leave.
Now, she was telling him she didn't want him to give in to her whim and move to Magnolia with her, but that she wanted to be there.
Sam asked, "You don't get to decide what happens by yourself. That's not fair. I've invested as much in this as you have, and I'm not going to give up on us. That's ridiculous, Layla. After everything, the idea that you'd be ready to quit after six months is stupid."
His wife said, "If we'd just waited, and dated, like our parents would have asked us to do if we'd just given them the chance, I don't think we would have gotten married. We would have gotten to this issue and broken up and gone on to live our lives. I always get caught up in my own feelings, and I guess six months ago, I just felt like if we loved each other enough, everything would just work itself out. That was naïve and stupid."
Sam remembered well how it felt when they'd gotten married; it had been the high of a lifetime. For the first month, they had a couple of little things go wrong, but they'd been in a state of bliss. When the afterglow wore off, they were left with questions about how their marriage was going to work, where they were going to live, and what was necessary for both to be happy.
Most people thought he had failed her as a husband. He'd taken her away from her family, and he was sure it was probably the unhappiest period of her life. They were constantly at odds, she cried a lot out of the sheer disappointment, and she was so far away from her family she couldn't lean on them.
His eyes moved over the guild, and most were either not paying attention or pretending not to stare. At a table in the corner on the other side, he could see his father-in-law watching them closely. When they'd married, Laxus had been so furious with Layla he didn't speak to her or even return her letters for a while, but when he came around, he was hopeful that they'd be okay.
Yuri and Petri Nekkis were still drinking beer up top, but Sam knew if Yuri had turned on the marriage, it spelled big trouble for them because he had always been Layla's best friend. If she'd wanted to leave, he'd certainly given her the courage to overcome her own obstinacy and do it.
This moment they'd come to was different than anything in any of their prior disagreements. Layla told him they couldn't stay together unless one of them gave up what was important to them, but that she didn't want to sacrifice her needs and she didn't want him to give up his. So she'd put forth the idea that they live separately.
Sam said, "How would that even work? The whole point of getting married is to be with somebody. I want to be with you."
"I want to be with you too, but it doesn't work, Sam. I don't really want you to give up your life, and I'm not going to give up mine. The truth is, we were both fine and happy on our own until we decided to do this."
He slumped down in his chair. "Do you even know how much it means to me to come home to you? It's everything to me."
"Sam, it isn't. If it was everything to you, if was enough, we wouldn't be here."
"So how does this work? You stay here, I stay back at home, and we see each other when? I don't want to do this. It's stupid, Layla. It's a terrible idea and I hate it. I'm not going to go along with this. If you don't want us to live together, don't string me along. If we're at the point where you don't even want to live with me anymore, at least have the guts to just admit you're done."
"Sam…"
He felt agitated, but he didn't even have the heart to yell about it.
He covered his face and rubbed it a few times as he let out a sigh. "This doesn't even feel real. I'll do whatever you want, Layla. Just don't do this. I'll move. I'll make sure we never fight again. Anything you want."
"I don't want you to be unhappy."
"And you think I'll be happy if you leave me? Is that fucking joke?"
Layla said, "I didn't say anything about leaving you. Just living in different places."
"I'm not doing that. Marriage is all or nothing. Can you imagine if our parents tried to raise us like that?"
"We don't have kids, Sam. And honestly, fuck our parents and their happy ending. They're not us. I'm at a point where I can admit what we did was a mistake. If you don't want to try a long-distance relationship, well, that's all I have to offer you right now," she said.
Sam scratched his head and sat there in silence while he thought about the options.
It was intense, brutal, and bloody to jump head-first into a marriage that they hardly thought out. Life had taught them some painful and difficult lessons, namely about the kinds of tricks the human mind can play on itself. All their lives, they'd operated out of a somewhat dysfunctional belief that there was something special about them.
Yet for as long as either of them could remember, they'd bickered. Always. About everything. And while that had been fine when they were children, it was different in a marriage.
For Layla, it was the death of one of the most powerful beliefs she'd held in her life. There had been so many boys she'd entertained brief crushes with, but she didn't stay with any of them for long. Most of them were okay guys, but she'd dismissed them all for not being Sam.
Sam had the same kind of mindset.
There were periods of time where she'd despised Sam, but even then, it was so deeply ingrained in her that the only way she was able to dig that part of her out was to actually be married to Sam and realize they were incompatible, and that their constant contention was a miserable state to live in.
They occasionally talked about the future in flowery terms, but with things as they were, she'd lost her taste for it.
Sam said, "I could move. I didn't realize it was this bad."
"What would the purpose of that even be? You'd come here, and you'd be the one who is unhappy, and you would blame me for it. And we'd still fight all the time and I'd feel bad that you weren't happy. That's nonsense. We'd be happier living apart than we are living together."
Layla was really saying in a lot of words that they were broken, and that there was no fixing them. The idea of living separate lives as married people was possibly enough for her, but it wasn't enough for him. He wasn't surrounded by family in Crocus, and he'd been far less unhappy than she had been. Sam enjoyed waking up next to her, and the times when they were at peace and they'd lay in bed and snuggle.
Of course, he liked the sex, and their screaming matches typically led to some of the most vigorous and impassioned sessions probably ever known to humankind.
Sometimes they played with their cat together, and it made his heart feel a certain kind of warm.
Coming home to an empty home and waiting long periods of time to spend brief visits with his wife was not part of his plan. He wanted to settle down, have someone around, raise a family of his own someday.
Layla's mind wasn't set on any of those things. As soon as she was removed from Magnolia, she became restless, frustrated, and eager to work, act out her independence. While she entertained and encouraged the idea of having a family, the longer they were together, the less she seemed interested.
Now Sam felt like maybe she'd talked less and less about their future because it vanished in her mind, bit by bit.
Sam said, "I wanted to marry you because I was lonely and because I love you. I felt like I needed a companion and someone who was going to be my partner. You were supposed to be that person. I'm not interested in some sort of long-distance crap. I'm just not. I'm not going to go along with it."
"Then what, Sam?"
"You're giving me shitty options. Well, one option. And you're acting like you're some wise sage telling me that I shouldn't compromise with you. I'll move, if you're going to leave me over it."
Layla answered, "First of all, we're not going to go down that road, where one of us ends up unhappy to keep the other. And second, I know what it's like to feel stifled, suffocated and unhappy in a marriage and I don't want you to feel that way. I'm not as selfish as you think."
"So you think you're going to move out and it's for my good. My wife thinks she can leave me, and tell me it's so I can be happy at the same time. Because I made you unhappy, you're going to save me from feeling as bad as I made you feel by just leaving? How do you think that's going to feel for me? This long-distance idea is stupid, and it's not going to work. It's just going to postpone what seems to be inevitable."
"Sam, wait, just…"
Sam raised his voice a little then and argued, "No, really think about it, Layla. How do we grow together if we're not around each other? No sharing mornings together or watching the cat growing bigger or snuggling or making love every night or staying up all night talking. How would we ever raise a family? We'd be miserable and alone and married at the same time."
His wife knew this was probably true; she'd try to think her way around it for a while. People separated to try and sort things out, but there wasn't anything to figure out. They didn't get along, wanted to live two different lives in two different places.
Sam crossed his arms and slouched down a little more. "Layla, I love you."
"I love you too."
Then he said, "I think we should split up. If you don't want to work on this anymore and living apart is the only thing you're willing to do, it's already over. I don't agree with it, but you're not giving me any choice in the matter."
Layla's first instinct was to cry, or to beg him not to go to those lengths, but Sam was right about a lot of things. Separation was a bandage slapped on a mortal wound that couldn't be fixed. They simply didn't have a path to the future and had no way to make one without someone being worse off than they would be outside of their marriage.
She didn't want it to be her, and she didn't want it to be him either. And he didn't want her to be unhappy forever. Sam had hoped up until that morning that she'd eventually give in and become happy with their life. Yet it hadn't happened, and he now knew it was never going to happen. Her insistence that he not move to Magnolia was in some ways a stunning rebuke of how he'd made her feel. He'd worn her down to nothing, with fights and frustrations and worries.
She nodded. "Okay."
They didn't have much else to say because they'd run out of things to talk about. They'd reached the end of the two decades long disaster that was Sam and Layla. It felt permanent because it came without the emotions and the irrational yelling. It simply was what it was.
Layla finally sighed. "How do we do this?"
"I don't know. I guess there's paperwork. You can come get your stuff whenever. I'm headed east for a while."
"What about Baby?" she asked of their cat.
Sam said, "Can she stay with me?"
Layla nodded, her lip quivering. "You'll take good care of her."
"Of course. She'll be fine. She'll miss you."
Sam asked, "I guess you get like half my earnings from when we were together. I'll have somebody sort it out."
"That's all right. I'm fine. I don't need anything. I mean, I'll come get the rest of my clothes and stuff."
"Our parents are going to be disappointed. But nowhere near as disappointed as I am right now. My heart literally hurts right now."
"Mine too," she said.
He stood up and took a few steps backward before he turned and walked out of the guild without a word to his father, who was sitting not far from the door. Gajeel followed, and Layla stood up and wandered up to her father's office, where her mother was doing guild paperwork.
Laxus made his way up after her, wondering what had been said. She wasn't in hysterics, which made it impossible to determine what had happened.
He was halfway there when he heard her suddenly break out into sobs, and upon entering, found her sobbing uncontrollably in her mother's arms.
They'd suspected things were amiss, but until Layla showed up, they hadn't understood just how badly things had gone or how unhappy Layla had been. She'd been very private about it, like admitting to them that there were problems meant she'd have to admit they'd made a mistake.
Of course it was a mistake; everyone knew it as soon as they married except them.
They'd had high hopes and put great faith in Layla and Sam, but life being what it was, neither Laxus nor Lucy was really shocked beyond belief. If they'd dated properly, it might have been different, but they hadn't, and consequently, they found out they had a serious incompatibility after they'd already tied the knot.
Despite attempting to raise their children as well as possible, they now had Yuri, who had publicly embarrassed them somewhat with a period of public whoring before decided to go back to his first love; Layla, who was on her way to a divorce; Anna, who got pregnant at eighteen and was now married; and Mavis, who—as she never forgot to point out—hadn't gotten into serious trouble.
This made them grateful for Lex, who was too young for any drama.
They weren't sure whether to try and talk Layla out of it, but once she finished crying, she finally opened up to them about everything. Their strong and fierce daughter had entangled herself in a web of confusion and angst and been broken down by it to the point not even her pride could keep her from admitting the marriage wasn't going to work.
Layla seemed to have grown up quite a lot; being stuck in an unhappy relationship long enough had given her a sense of empathy. Now, she no longer wanted Sam to capitulate to moving to Magnolia because she knew how he'd feel.
Despite being devastated, disappointed, and somehow shocked by the collapse of her marriage, Layla's decision seemed to be based on logic rather than the two of them just getting so mad at each other they couldn't deal with one another anymore.
When she cried herself to sleep on the sofa in the office, Lucy covered her with a blanket.
"What do you think?"
Her husband shook his head. "I want to snap Sam in half."
"Primal urges don't count as thoughts. I don't think Sam really stole her or talked her into anything. They're equally guilty here," Lucy said.
Laxus sat down at his desk and rested his head on his hand. "But hear me out. If someone marries my kid, I expect them to make that kid happy. That's not just for the girls, either. If you were ever unhappy, I would have made changes. When you took a break from going on jobs, I would always try to pay attention and figure out if you were really okay with it."
"I don't think that makes it Sam's fault. They're both responsible for how it started and probably how it ended. Let's be real, honey—it probably took a lot more guts and maturity to decide to get out than it did to get in. Besides, figuring out who to blame doesn't change anything," Lucy answered.
Lucy sat on the edge of the sofa, steadily rubbing her back. "I just wish there was a way we could really help her now. This is going to be a rough process. For a top wizard to get divorced? It's going to be publicly humiliating on top of being personally devastating. And poor Sam—he must be heartbroken too. He has a lot more to lose than she does."
They talked until she woke up, seeming groggier than she should have been.
She sat up and slung her legs over the sofa.
Her mother snuggled up close, and Layla gave her a weak attempt at a smile.
"Are you guys mad at me, or disappointed, or ashamed, or whatever?"
Laxus shook his head. "You know we're not really assholes, right? You're our kid. We feel bad it all went this way; we really were rooting for you to be happy. No parent wants to see their kid get hurt. You'll understand someday."
Lucy asked, "We love you no matter what you do. We totally support you and we'll be here for you no matter what happens."
Layla frowned and cried, "Sam is keeping custody of our kitten. That makes me sad. All of this makes me sad. Everything is terrible right now."
They sat on each side of her and let her cry and ramble on about all the different sides of her life that were going to be impacted by her impending divorce. There were logistical concerns: moving, separating of things and feelings, completing divorce paperwork and having to explain in writing why they weren't going to stay married, and then emotional fallout. Outside of that, there was the massive public impact because there was exactly zero chance Sorcerer's Weekly wasn't going to cover the disaster in-depth within their gossip section. Layla would have to face the world, including all her friends and family, who thought eloping was a mistake all along.
Ultimately, they decided to let the decision be what it was. If it had been anybody else, they might have encouraged reason and patience, but Sam and Layla had clearly explored the extents of their reason and patience as human beings.
They were left with the suspicion Yuri had somehow figured out—maybe from her letters—that she was desperately unhappy and isolated and decided to go help her in whatever way he could. It only showed them how important and meaningful having siblings was, even now that most of their children had reached adulthood.
Once Layla calmed down, they were left with paperwork due to the Magic Council in the morning and Lucy decided to stay behind because after all those years, she still didn't really trust her husband's accounting, especially on damage reports. At some point, he was just going to get annoyed and start making estimates and rounding some numbers off in the millions and that just meant she'd have to come in later and fix it.
Laxus walked his daughter home while she held onto his arm, almost like a little kid.
"How many 'I told you so's' can I expect?" she asked.
Laxus shrugged. "I've made mistakes too, you know. Bigger ones than you. I know what it's like to be young and so full of excitement and fervor that you don't give yourself a chance to realize you might be doing more harm than good to yourself or other people."
He stopped at a little ice cream shop and bought ice cream for them, and they sat down on a bench and went to work on their treats.
He smiled and said, "Once, a million years ago, your mom dragged me to a childbirth class when she was pregnant with Yuri. And then we sat in this exact spot and she ate ice cream and made fun of my anxiety and horror. Then she pretended she was in labor just to scare the shit out of me and giggled all the way home."
His daughter laughed at him. "Mom's the best. You probably deserved it anyway."
"She'd have done it even if I didn't."
"Were you nervous?"
"Are you kidding? I was terrified. I didn't really know what to expect. I didn't know if I'd be a good parent. We just sort of got swept up in our feelings and decided to do it."
Layla said, "Since I was little, I've always just sort of assumed—with a few notable hiatuses—that I'd be with Sam and we'd be like you guys. You guys are pretty cute for old people, you know. I always watch you and think to myself, that's what I want to have someday."
Her father kissed her hair. "The thing is, you're not your mom and Sam isn't me. Everyone has to figure out how to be happy, and what works for them. That's what being young is about: having enough energy and being stubborn enough to find your own way in the world through mistakes and hardships. You think getting divorced is bad. I was on a whole different level than you as far as mistakes go, but everything turned out all right for me. I found a great person to spend my life with when I was older than you are, and we achieved our dreams together, raised some brats. It's been good. So as long as you keep going, it'll be good for you too."
After they finished, they sat on the bench and watched the sunset and then headed home.
At their house, things were quieter than she remembered at different parts of her life. When she was little, and the twins were noisy, they'd had Chelia, their nanny, and her great grandfather. There was even a tiger in the house. But they outgrew the need for a nanny and Chelia moved on with her own life, Makarov died, the tiger passed on, Anna had moved out, and even the exceed they'd hatched really lived with Anna and Iggy.
The house was so quiet.
Some things in the house had moved around since she'd last lived there;
Anna's room was now a nursery for visiting itty bitties, the exercise equipment from the basement was in Makarov's old room, Chelia's old room—once the guest room—now had bookcases filled with magic books. Her old room was the new guest room, but by the time she'd gotten home, Yuri had brought some of her stuff down from the attic before leaving for his job.
The basement door was inexplicably locked, which she discovered while looking for extra clothes hangers, which had been kept down there in the past.
In their house, the only doors that were ever locked were bathroom doors. Layla was left with questions about what went on in their basement now that was so bad it required a locked door.
Laxus watched her attempt to go into the basement and then stare at the locked door, absolutely perplexed. "Do you need something?"
Layla said, "Hangers."
"The upstairs closet by the bathroom."
His daughter stared back at the door. "So…what's going on in the basement. The exercise equipment is out. The door is locked. Do you have a dungeon now or something?"
"We're not really into that kind of thing."
"Eww, Dad! Gross! Gross! I was making a joke about the normal kind of dungeon. Not some nasty S&M stuff."
Laxus' brow rose. "Where did you learn about that?" And then, "You know what? Don't answer that question. Ever. Now that my children are adults, there are so many things I just never want to learn about them. This tops the list now."
"You make everything terrible."
"That's my job as a parent."
His daughter asked, "So what is going on in the basement?"
"Would you like to know?"
"We don't lock doors in this house."
Laxus said, "We do now."
He reached into his pocket for a set of keys and unlocked the door.
Layla opened it and flipped on the lights, her jaw dropping in shock. "No way!"
The basement was filled with equipment for making booze.
There was winemaking equipment in one spot, and various other little things she didn't really know how to identify. It smelled interesting, to say the least. There was a desk and a little bookcase filled with books on making beer, wine, champagne, and other spirits.
Layla said, "How…why?"
He shrugged. "Now that you guys are all kind of doing your own thing, we can have hobbies and do things for fun for the first time in a long time."
"Raising us wasn't fun?"
"Compared to this? On the fun and entertainment scale, children versus booze is a pretty easy call to make."
Laxus pulled a glass jug from a shelf on the wall and offered it to her. "Cherry vanilla cider. Our own recipe. Enjoy."
She opened it and smelled it. "Are you guys okay? I suddenly feel like kids were the only thing that kept you out of trouble. Now that most of us are grown, what? You just naturally decided the best thing to do was to start making bathtub hooch in your basement?"
"Yes. We're old, we can do what we want, and calling our hobby 'bathtub hooch' is insulting. It's like telling a famous painter he's good at finger paints."
Layla cautiously tasted the cider and was surprised to find it was incredibly delicious. A little sweet, a little tart, and all kinds of perfect, she took another gulp. "All right. This is good, but you guys are bad at being old. Old people get up early and go to bed early, eat a lot of unseasoned food, talk slow and a curse less, they don't drink, and most importantly, I don't know any other senior citizens that are running a distillery out of their basement."
"You know I'm not that old, right? Being fifty doesn't mean it's time to check into a senior citizens home and prepare for death. This is a good time in our lives; our kids are grown and we can do what we want."
"What about Lex?"
"We lock the door. He's our fifth kid. We're pretty chill at this point. We're honestly probably spoiling him a little. He's a good kid. We like him."
As soon as she bent her mind around the idea that her parents were really making alcohol in their home, it made a lot of sense. When she was little, she almost never saw her mom with anything more than a glass of wine at dinner, but as time went by and her mom grew a lot more carefree, she'd occasionally drink too much wine, giggle for hours, and share her opinions freely with everyone.
Her father always loved a good drink, but he was mostly into having fun with his wife and had always delighted in doing anything with her. Drunk Lucy seemed to amuse him to no end and he enabled and joined her whenever she felt like having a good night.
Layla knew her parents probably thoroughly enjoyed working on recipes, testing their product, and then getting drunk.
Laxus watched his daughter process all this information and said, "Are you going to be okay with the knowledge that your parents have a hobby?"
"It's just weird for me, as your child, do know you're down here finding new ways to get drunk. You're like, my parents. The people who told me not to drink in excess and to behave myself when I grew up."
"We knew you weren't going to listen to us anyway. That's just something parents have to say, like when they say they love all their kids equally. Besides, we sold a bunch of this stuff at the farmer's market and made a ton. It's a lucrative and fun hobby," he answered.
They heard the front door open and headed back up, and Laxus locked the door again.
Anna was there, wearing holding a baby on each hip. "Hi Gams and Auntie Layla. Guess whose really excited to see you guys?"
Hadyn and Taryn Dragneel strongly resembled the Dreyar side of the family, but now they were getting a little bigger and it was becoming clear they'd gotten some other traits. They looked exactly alike except Hadyn had green eyes and Taryn had blue. Their eyes were enormous and slanted, like Natsu's, and they had Lucy's mouth and some of the Strauss genes could be seen around the nose. They'd both ended up with pointed ears like Ivan, Layla, and Mavis.
An old woman had implied they looked like 'cute little baby demons' when Lisanna and Natsu had taken them to the park for some sun, and while most parents would have found this insulting, a family with their Great Aunt Mirajane, who ate and transformed into various demons, and two dragon-blooded grandparents, and untold other oddities, it had been taken as a compliment.
It was amusing to the Dreyars that their most normal-looking, sweet, and mild-mannered child gave birth to these otherworldly creatures.
She had a diaper bag over her shoulder. "We're taking the train out in an hour."
"Are we watching the itty bitties?"
"I asked mom this morning. She said it was fine. I can ask Natsu and Lisanna if they can do it, or we can postpone our job. Sorry, I thought you knew."
This was news to Laxus. He had no complaints and assumed Lucy had just failed to mention it because Layla happened. Watching the grandkids was fulfilling and wonderful and provided exactly the amount of baby interaction necessary to keep them happy without all the inconvenience of actually having to be a parent.
Laxus took one baby, then the other. "No problems. Your job should take about four days?"
"I think."
Layla took the diaper bag and Anna turned and gave her the biggest, longest hug.
"Oh look, my little sister who is happily married with a family already heard I'm getting divorced and has spared me some pity."
Anna squeezed her harder. "I'm sorry. I love you so much. I know you'll be happy. Maybe you just haven't found your prince. I believe in happily ever after."
Layla growled, "I love you but you need to get away from me right now."
Her little sister refused to let her go, and Layla tolerated her affections because that was just who she was.
When Anna finally released her, she looked back up at their father. "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"
"Good?" he answered.
"The good news is that Taryn hasn't shocked anyone in almost twelve hours. The bad news is Hadyn is doing that thing where he sneezes fire—there's an enchanted fireproof blanket in the bag. Taryn has diarrhea and there's medicine. And he's cranky because his tummy is upset. He started biting."
Laxus nodded. "Yelling, biting, housefires, leaky diapers, risk of electrical shock. Got it."
She stood on her tiptoes and when he leaned down, kissed him on the cheek. "You're the best."
Anna saw the cider in Layla's hand. "Is that from the basement? Be careful. You'll wake up tomorrow wondering who puked all over your bathroom. Mom and Dad party hard."
When she left, and the door closed, he said to Layla, "She's a lightweight."
"You guys are literally the worst old people in the world."
Laxus felt something warm on his arm and let out a sigh. "That didn't take long."
Layla said, "I'm…going to go unpack. Good luck with that, Dad. It looks…absolutely disgusting."
He started damage control while his daughter seemingly vanished into thin air.
When Lucy came home, it was to a late dinner that Layla had made. She was a good cook, so Lucy was honestly glad she was back at home. Without her, Laxus and her took turns cooking and her husband had never quite learned how to make food that was more than edible.
Layla was putting icing on a cake she'd made, but she stopped briefly to warm up a plate for her mom.
Lucy ate while they talked about everything except the impending divorce, and when she finished, she found her husband outside, shirtless and snoring with his mouth open in his hammock with their two grandsons sound asleep on his chest, one of whom was drooling.
His shirt was on the ground, discarded due to baby spit up on one shoulder.
It was warm, and they were all comfy and asleep, so Lucy decided to leave them alone. As a woman who had raised twins, she knew any time when they were both asleep was a small miracle that shouldn't be disturbed.
She headed back in and found the cake had disappeared to Layla's room, along with the jug of cherry vanilla cider. Getting drunk and eating an entire cake seemed like an understandable reaction to Layla's personal toil, even to Lucy. Her mother joined her after she'd showered and changed into pajamas, armed with more cider, a wine glass, and a fork to help her through this moment.
Lucy sat on the bed and began to eat directly off the cake plate sitting on Layla's lap.
"So…we're all right?"
Layla nodded. "I'm not going to die, right?"
"You'll be fine. Your dad and I think you can survive anything. We compare you guys to cockroaches all the time. Except Anna, she's nice."
Layla filled her wine glass back up and downed a few gulps. "If I was going to be an insect, I'd want to be a praying mantis."
"I'm scared to ask why, but I'm going to do it anyway."
Her daughter held up the jug and said, "This is…very strong stuff. But it's just so sweet at good. But about the praying mantis, did you know that when they're trying to mate, males approach the female, and most of them, she doesn't even deal with them. She just grabs them and bites their heads off and eats their bodies. And then, when she finally decides she's going to do it, she kills her mate while he's trying to do what he's got to do and his body keeps going. Then she eats the rest of him when he's done."
Lucy nodded. "Well, from that I can tell your mental health and attitude toward men is in tip-top shape. Barring a little cannibalism and necrophilia, you're a perfectly normal girl. I'm your mom and it's not my job to judge you."
"Thanks, Mom." Layla poured more cider into her glass. "I assume this is your recipe, because it doesn't taste like fermented death."
"Of course. The longer I'm with your father, the more I become convinced he doesn't have any taste buds."
Layla asked, "Did you know you loved dad the first time you met him?"
"I thought your dad was an asshole for the first two years that I knew him. I hated his attitude, I hated the things he did, I hated the sound of his voice, and I especially hated his sense of fashion. He had no redeeming qualities to me. Keep in mind, your dad had Evergreen turn me into stone and tried to blow up Magnolia, so I had my reasons."
"So how did you fall in love?"
Lucy sipped her drink a little. "Your dad was hot for Lucy since always, but when we actually got together, it was kind of an accident, I guess. I was just at the store one day and I ran into him, and he didn't want to go to this ball alone. I'd stopped thinking he was completely irredeemable by that point, so why not? I had nothing going on. Never had a boyfriend before, never been kissed before, nothing. It was just one date, and I was old enough I felt like I was doing something wrong if I'd never been on one date ever.
"But it was magical. In a weird way. I had an open mind, I guess, and we just really had fun. The first time he kissed me, I thought my heart was going to pound so hard it would rip out of my chest. I felt dizzy and had butterflies. I still feel that way sometimes."
Layla was surprised to really listen to how her parents got together. She'd known a few things, like the fact they'd known each other for a while before they dated, but actually hearing how unintentional it was so strange. Her parents were the most in-love and happy couple she had ever known. They did literally everything together, from crossword puzzles to running the guild to their little basement project.
She couldn't imagine a time when her parents were physically capable of not swooning over each other regularly, or what they were like without each other.
They made gradual progress on the cake and washing it down with the cider, made progress towards a state of total drunkenness.
She giggled to the point of squealing over the first time her mother met her father's pet tiger, rolled her eyes at a story where he broke into her apartment and puked on her floor, and another time Laxus and Natsu had both attempted to invade her bed and ended up sleeping with each other.
Layla wished she'd asked these questions a long time ago.
The truth about Laxus and Lucy Dreyar was that they had always been happy. Maybe they'd had a scrape or two like any couple but listening to her mother tell her about what things were like when they were young only showed that they really hadn't changed much. He still annoyed her as a form of affection, she still rolled her eyes at him at least thirty times a day, and they still kissed way more than any kid wants to see their parents kiss.
"How did you know Dad was the one?"
Lucy explained, "You know how you think about different ways your life might turn out? While we were dating, I gradually stopped thinking about any future that didn't include your dad, and he did the same. So we came to a point were we made the decision that we didn't want to live without each other anymore."
Layla sighed. "I've always just had this belief that it was supposed to be Sam. Sometimes, I didn't make room for anything else. It was like an idea and not really a reality. If Sam is my soulmate, then I belong with him and everything should work out…except that's not how life works."
"I don't believe in soulmates. Not in that sense, at least. I did when I was young. I felt like I was going to meet some guy someday and I'd just know that I was supposed to be with him. Then when I really fell in love, it wasn't like that. Your dad is my soulmate because I chose him to be. Being happily married for us wasn't about finding someone you can't live without. It was about finding the best person to live with. And I just knew that if I stayed with your dad I'd never experience boredom, loneliness, or normalcy again. We've had a great marriage with lots of happiness and excitement."
Her daughter said, "Someday, I want what you have. You guys are so happy. People talk about growing old together, and you and Dad make it seem like it's fun."
Lucy snuggled up to her and went for another bite of cake. "Let's be fair. You've got some growing up to do. But when I got with your dad, I did too. No one is perfect, and young people are a lot less perfect than they think they are. If you're a girl who has bigger dreams than three kids and a great meatloaf, the world makes it a little harder. I believe in you, and your dad believes in you."
"Sam needs a normal girl like that, I think. He works a lot, sometimes far away. When he comes home, he's tired, and he wants someone there. With a great meatloaf. And I mean, my meatloaf is good, but I got so bored trying to live that life and be that person."
"Then let Sam go be with a normal girl. You stay weird and difficult, you have other things in life you need to be doing than worrying about trying to be something you're not."
Layla said, "You're really the best, Mom."
The two continued their chatter well into the night, after Laxus came in and fed, bathed, and put his grandsons to bed. Lex was spending the night at someone else's house and everyone else was working, so the house was fairly quiet except for the giggling and loud, drunk talk coming from Layla's room.
Despite being foolish, their daughter was quite resilient, so he was confident that she'd be just fine eventually. She'd chosen to learn a very difficult lesson in the worst possible way, but all they could do was help her get through it and hope she really did learn.
Lucy finished up with Layla at four in the morning, at which point she just crawled into their bed. She was blushing from being so incredibly wasted and was apparently quite happy and pleased with herself. A little burp escaped her when she flopped down on his chest and grinned, sighing in contentment.
"Charming," he mumbled.
His wife bit him in response. "Don't talk back to me. You smell good. I like you."
"I like you too. You smell like you were swimming in a vat of alcohol."
Lucy snuggled up. "You looked really cute today, in your hammock, with babies. You always look adorable with a kid. You're like, the cutest, most handsome grandfather ever."
She started to prop herself up and he sat up a little.
"What on earth are you trying to do?" he asked.
Lucy's only answer was to bite his bottom lip and whisper, "I'm hot for grandpa."
He sighed and brought a hand to his face. "Good God, you need to go to sleep."
His wife just giggled. "C'mon, where's your spirit of adventure?"
"My spirit of adventure knows you're going to pass out on me as soon as I get hard and then what?"
Lucy playfully whispered as she rubbed her nose on his, "Sad wanky time for you."
"Hmph."
She managed to crawl onto him in a very unsexy and clumsy way, and he steadied her just to keep her from falling out of the bed. "You know what Layla told me?"
"I'm not sure that I want to know, but you're going to tell me anyway."
"When a praying mantis is doing it, the female bites the head of the male and his body keeps going. Then she eats the rest of him."
Laxus turned on the light and gazed at her with the a puzzled, slightly despondent expression. "Cannibalism and insect sex crimes—these are things you talk about with our daughter?"
"I mean, why not? She went to school. She's smart. She knows about bugs. She's getting divorced, so she knows about sex. I want our kids to feel like they can talk about whatever is on their mind and that is what Layla wanted to talk about. So that's what we talked about."
She bit his bottom lip again and started to reach her hand down to him, and then abruptly went face down and passed out on top of him.
Laxus tucked his wife in, turned out the lights, and drifted off to sleep.
The twins stayed asleep for the hours that were left, and early the next morning, he dressed and fed them. Lisanna came to get them in the morning because the grandparents always took little shifts caring for the babies while their parents worked. She'd bring them to the guild in the afternoon, so they could go home with the Dreyars at night.
The guildmaster, father, and husband made some toast and eggs, and waited patiently for the women to wake up. Lucy came down first, seeming chipper as she'd become increasingly impervious to hangovers.
Layla didn't come down until almost noon, and when she did, she had the crankiest, most twisted facial expression her parents had ever seen on her.
"Good morning. How are you feeling?" Laxus asked.
Layla narrowed her eyes at him. "Don't talk to me. I have a hangover from your trashcan moonshine."
"Bathtub hooch, trashcan moonshine…the insults are hurtful, but probably not as hurtful as your hangover."
Lucy was fine, leaving her daughter to glare even more angrily at her.
"Why are you okay?"
Lucy poured her daughter some coffee. "Because I wasn't born yesterday. Or approximately, seven thousand, eight hundred yesterdays, like you."
Laxus penciled an answer into his crossword.
Layla vegetated and said little for quite some time, but when she did, she asked, "Are you ashamed of me?"
"A little," Laxus replied, "Who in the world lets their own mother drink them under the table?"
"Not about that, Dad."
"Oh, is it about the bugs thing? Cause you two are disgusting and weird," he said.
This was an answer enough, but Lucy drove the point home by added, "Don't worry, we have a plan to smother you and make you feel so loved you can't stand us."
"That sounds great. Sort of."
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Special thanks for Adonisx, chipthemunkey, NyphadoraQuinn, Mili, motherotakuu, guest, 17, queenofws, glassmountains, LunaStarLady, Stavroula99, dlynncherry, Helenezahl, twizt312, katiekat2001, Naenae37, Aviend, , Izakuchiru, screeney, Sea Dragonslayer, Tiernank, Starwest45, arouraleona, Light heartfilia, Kai-kagamine-miraimine, savygirl1515, thornado, lmarie07, bukakkegirl, ravenLDG, purplemara, b2utifulshawol, and morenoel for reviewing!
AN: I love you guys. I thought for sure my story would have been forgotten by most. I literally cried when I saw how many people were still with us.