AN: Quick update, guys! *3*

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What to Expect When You're Expecting

Chapter Sixteen – Hormones

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"We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen." – Paulo Coelho

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He was so tired that all Gray wanted was to sleep for a whole week; so when he arrived home after a day at work, all the man wanted was to go to bed and rest. Apparently, no one told his girlfriend.

Not even after five minutes he was inside his apartment, he received a call from her. He thought about just ignore it and go to sleep, but he thought about Bean. He had to take the call.

"Hey, Juvia." Gray sighed.

"Gray-sama!" Her voice was excited and the man smiled with how perky she sounded. "Can you come over?"

"Juvia, I am tired."

"Bean moved!" She squealed in happiness. "Bean just moved and Juvia could feel it with her hand! I think you can feel it now too!"

"What?" Gray was getting excited about it himself. He was waiting for it to happen for a while now. "I… How? When?" He was searching for his keys as they spoke on the phone.

"Just a minute ago." She laughed. "Juvia's sure you can feel it now, Gray-sama!"

"I'll be at your place in five minutes!" He was out of his bedroom and walking towards the door when Loki asked what was going on. "My kid is moving!"

The orange haired man didn't get it, so he just shrugged and decided to ask about it later.

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Gray didn't care that he probably got twenty speeding tickets during the way to Juvia's; he got his bicycle and was at her apartment in 8 minutes and 13 seconds. Once he opened the apartment with the key she gave him, Gray found her sitting on the couch, with a big smile.

"Bean's still at it!"

Kneeling in front of her on the couch, Gray carefully put his hand over Juvia's was. The expectation was killing him, and when he felt nothing, he looked up to Juvia, disappointed, but she just kept smiling.

"Wait…"

True enough, after a few seconds, he felt underneath the palm of his hand a small movement. That was his child, giving a hello to him even before it was born! How amazing was that?

"I felt that!" Gray exclaimed and after a moment, there was another movement and he laughed. "I felt that too, Juvia!"

"Yeah." The blunette was openly crying, but smiling at the same time. "Isn't it nice?"

He sat by her side on the couch, his hands never leaving her swollen stomach and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "It's amazing. I was starting to think that Bean was refusing to let me feel it!"

After a minute, all the movement stopped and Gray removed his hands from her stomach, putting an arm around her shoulders while she nested herself on him.

"I can't believe I almost missed Bean's first movements." He said after a while, when the high of feeling his unborn child for the first time was going away. "If I hadn't got here when I did…"

"The good thing is that you arrived in time." Juvia looked up to him and gave him a light kiss on his lips. "You shouldn't go back to your place, Gray-sama. You look tired. Let's go to bed."

Gray nodded, but his mind was starting to create a plan. He was not missing another moment of this pregnancy.

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The living arrangements were crap.

Gray and Juvia were having a baby together and he was living with Loki while she was living with Gajeel. How on earth could they raise a baby like that? Well, some people could manage, but Gray didn't want to live far away from Juvia and the baby. What if something happened and he was not around? Just like when she wanted to eat ice cream and pickles at four in the morning, and went to buy it.

He was still pissed off about it, of course. Gray was right by her side; he would gladly get up to fetch her some pickles, for goodness sake! Wasn't it one of those things men did for their pregnant women?

After thinking for a few days, Gray put his plan in motion. The people involved on it were more than eager to help him out, the only thing that was now missing, was telling the pregnant girl, who was full of hormones and the night before cried for half an hour after seeing an ad for a diamond necklace on a magazine.

"Do you kno-know th-that they make chi-children work for th-them ba-back where they g-g-g-get the diamonds?" The woman was crying so hard and sobbing so much that Gray was having a hard time trying to get what she was saying.

"So… you don't like diamonds because of it?" He tried to be supportive, putting an arm around her shoulders.

"Of course Juvia likes diamonds! They are beautiful and shiny!" The blunette pushed him away from her, got up from the couch, threw the magazine at him and said: "What's wrong with you?" She, then, left for her bedroom, slamming the door on the way, leaving a very confused Gray behind.

That conversation about moving would be very unpleasant, Gray knew. Juvia and Gajeel were together since before they arrived in Magnolia, years ago. He knew they had it rough, and some things not even Juvia would tell him about it, and to get separated would be a hard blow.

That's why his co-author in the plan, was Levy McGarden, Gajeel's girlfriend.

With the pretext of having dinner together, both he and Levy gathered both after the meal to talk seriously.

"Levy and I were talking." Gray said, glancing towards the petite girl who was sitting by his side, while she nodded, offering support. "This is not working." Gajeel and Juvia looked at each other, confused, before Gray started to talk again. "You two living together is not working anymore."

"Oh..." Juvia said, frowning. "But…"

"No." Gray shook his head. "As your boyfriend, I don't like the fact that my girlfriend lives with a guy. It was fine for a while, but now it just pisses me off. I know Gajeel spends most of his nights with Levy anyways, and I stay here, but even so."

"I agree." Levy nodded, looking at the pregnant girl with her chocolate eyes. "I love you Ju-chan and I know you love Gray, but... What if he shared an apartment with a beautiful woman, what would you feel? Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes." Juvia nodded. She totally understood what Levy was feeling. The blunette already felt jealous that Gray shared an apartment with Loki, a man. She would've died in frustration if his roommate was a girl; that is, if the roommate didn't have an 'accident.'

"Well, I don't." Gajeel crossed his arms over his chest and leaned on the sofa. "We live together just fine."

"Gajeel, you have seen Juvia's breasts." Gray was serious, hating the idea that another man saw her naked, even though he knew it happened, the feeling wasn't better because of it. "What if it was Levy and... I don't know... Me! You would be pissed, right?"

"Wait, did you see Juvia's breasts?" Levy asked glancing towards Juvia's more than sizable chest -especially with the pregnancy- while she had a much smaller one. She knew Gajeel like her body, but she would like to have bigger boobs to show to him. Like Juvia had.

"Damn, Fullbuster. Buy me dinner before fucking me over." Gajeel whispered under his breath when Levy glared at him. "Look, shit happens, okay? Wake up early is difficult, so sometimes I just go to the bathroom without listening to the shower running. It happens."

"Well, we don't want it to happen anymore, do we?" Levy hissed and Gajeel visibly paled.

"Especially with the baby on the way." Gray pointed to Juvia's bump and the girl immediately put her hand over it. "You and I need to speak about living arrangements. I hate that I wasn't here to go get food to you during the night, or that I almost missed the first time Bean moved. I don't want to miss anything else, Juvia. I think we should find a place of our own. For you, me and Bean."

There were a few moments of silence, where the four of them just stared at each other, until Juvia spoke softly.

"Can… Can Juvia and Gajeel talk first?" The blunette asked, making Gray and Levy nod and get up from the couch.

"Sure." Levy said and offered Juvia a smile, which the pregnant girl returned.

Once both were at the kitchen, talking about something neither she nor Gajeel could identify, Juvia turned to Gajeel, and whispered. "What should we do?"

"You should go look for a place for you and the kid with Stripper." Gajeel shrugged, looking up to the ceiling. "They're right, you know? You have your own family now."

"We've been together for eight years." Juvia pointed out.

"I know." The dark haired man let out a sigh.

"I don't wanna lose you." She teared up and hugged the big man that was by her side, as he patted her on the back, clumsy.

"You'll just live in another place, Juvia. You and I are not saying good-bye forever." Gajeel rolled his red eyes and sighed in annoyance. "Besides, I would be cranky if I had to wake up with a baby crying every day."

The girl chuckled. "Juvia's not looking forward to it either." They stayed in silence for a moment, still somewhat hugging each other. "You don't know how to cook. You'll put the whites along with the colors when you do laundry. You'll forget the date to pay the bills…"

Gajeel snorted. "I can cook noodles, I don't have any white clothes and I can put a note on my phone so I don't forget to pay the bills." Juvia looked up to him and he looked down to her. "You don't have to mother me anymore, Juvia. Focus on your kid. I lived alone for a decade before meeting you, I think I can survive."

"You'll forget about Juvia!" Her eyes started to water and Gajeel began to panic. If this was normal Juvia, it was a different thing. With a Pregnant Hormonal Juvia was impossible to know what could calm her down or what could trigger another river from her eyes.

"Fullbuster…" Gajeel squeaked. Yes, squeaked. "Gray! Come here."

Juvia's boyfriend was by their side in a heartbeat, worried. "What did you say to her?" He stared at his sobbing girlfriend, who was hugging Gajeel as tightly as she could. "Gajeel, what did you…?"

"I said that I could take care of myself!" Gray muttered: 'Idiot' and Gajeel looked to Juvia's blue hair, her face was buried on his chest while crying, then Gray, then Levy, who took her cellphone out and was probably taking pictures. "Shrimp, you better stop…"

"People will love to know that a crying girl is enough to make the great Gajeel Redfox panic." Levy giggled, and even Gray grinned, before lean over to his girlfriend.

"Juvia… Juvia. Come on." Gently, Gray removed Juvia's arms from Gajeel. She wrapped them around Gray instead. The boy was used to have her sobbing about the most random things for the last couple of weeks. "You two can go, I've got this."

Levy offered her hand to Gajeel, which he took it and both went to the man's room, leaving Gray with a crying Juvia.

It took ten minutes for the girl to calm down, and during the whole time, Gray was rubbing her back and her hair. It took him three crying outbursts to figure out that she calmed down faster when her hair was stroked.

"So many changes…" The blunette said in a low voice. "Five months ago we haven't even kissed yet and now, apparently, we will move in together, and in four months we will have a baby." Gray groaned a non-committal sound; it was better to let her have her own thoughts, otherwise he could trigger some more crying. "Everything is changing so fast and so radically."

"Yes." Gray put a hand over her stomach. "And things will change even more, Juvia."

"Juvia never had a real family." She whispered. "Not like the baby will. Juvia didn't have a mother or a father to count on. What if Juvia doesn't know how to be a mother? Wha-What if she screws up and Bean hates Juvia? What if…?"

"Okay, okay… Calm down." Gray chuckled. "You'll be a good mom, Juvia. Freaking out about it is a way of caring…" She sighed and started to move away from Gray.

"Are you sure that you want to live with Juvia, Gray-sama?" The girl asked while getting up from the couch. "It's a big step."

"Yes, I am. We are already having a baby and we are together. It's the logical way. Besides, it's nice to wake up next to you. The rest of the day just gets better after it." Gray shrugged and Juvia, who was about to get something to eat, turned around to look at her boyfriend, eyes watering again. When he noticed it, Gray got up too, but couldn't go too far after being tackled back to the couch.

"G-G-G-G-Gray-sama is s-s-s-so sweet!"

Crazy things, hormones.

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AN: Hey guys! How did you like this chapter? Was Gray too sudden with his 'request'?

Thanks to: ninjamedina18, Theejay-sama, MashiroLOVE, Guest, Heartgold, Babykat570, Rochi-Chan, MrsGooglyBear, Cookie-chan91, Allegracat, Xeylah, FairyTailGirlHayden, TAEMiNATOR18, Yukistar, Gray23Dragon, Tamniin, AliceCullen3, otaku03, Jessicutie, Sarapyon, CeeCeeBee, Darkhope, animegirl115, YamixTeaLover, xScarletxMoonx0, Professor Nebilim, Summer Éclair, superduperizee, SappireRose578, Sandyx5, Chibi War-Chan, CapriciousKrego, DoomedToBeACrazyFanGirlForever, 4EverETRNL, Mitsuzo, BrigitteoO and Medaka-chan, who reviewed! You guys are awesome.

Oh, guys… I need your help. What do you think Gray's job should be? :D

06/18/2013 ~ BonneyQ