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The test had been sitting on the edge of the sink for four minutes.
Juvia knew because she had counted every second, standing with her back pressed against the cold tile wall, arms folded tight across her chest, staring at the small plastic stick like it might change its mind if she watched it long enough.
It hadn't.
Two lines. Faint, but two unmistakable lines.
She had bought it on impulse three days ago, tucked it into the bottom of her shopping bag beneath a loaf of bread and some new ribbon, told herself it was just in case, told herself it was nothing, she was probably just tired from the last mission, from the travel.
She had let it sit in her nightstand drawer for those three days and had almost thrown it away twice.
She hadn't, though.
And now…
Two lines.
Juvia slid down the wall until she was sitting on the bathroom floor, knees pulled to her chest, and she pressed her fingers over her mouth and tried very hard to decide what it was she was feeling.
The first thing that came out was something between a laugh and a sob, swallowed quickly against her own palm.
Outside, it had started to rain as her eyes filled with tears.
She was fairly certain she hadn't done that. The sky had been overcast since morning, long before this, but the rain came harder now, drumming against the small window above her head, and she tilted her face up toward the sound of it like a reflex.
Gray-sama.
His name surfaced before any coherent thought could, like it always did.
She thought of his hands. Rough from his magic use, from fights, from a life that had asked too much of him for too long but were so careful with her in a way that still sometimes caught her off guard. And how much more careful they would be with a little baby.
She thought of the way he slept, his arm always finding its way around her no matter what. She thought of the little argument they'd had two weeks ago about whether rice or bread was a more reasonable breakfast staple, and how he'd lost and been deeply irritated about it but had brought her rice anyway, and how she had loved him so completely in that moment she had physically ached.
She pressed her hand flat against her stomach.
Oh.
The sob that came out then was real and full and she didn't try to stop it. It wasn't sad, it wasn't sad at all, it was just enormous, too big for her heart to take it.
She cried the way she sometimes cried at the end of a romcom, at the recent guild weddings, at the look on Gray's face the first time he'd said I love you to her.
She sat on the bathroom floor and cried and after a while the enormous feeling began, slowly, to take a shape she could hold a little better.
Something so small. Something that was half her and, the thought arrived with a warmth so acute it was almost dizzying, half him.
Juvia laughed again, wet-faced and undignified, and this time she let it.
How would she tell him?
This was, she had decided, the most important thing she would ever say to Gray.
It had to be right.
She could do something elaborate. A romantic setting with candles and a view, dressed beautifully and gazing into each others eyes. He would be uncomfortable and suspicious and would probably say why are we here, this is weird, but he would also hold her hand across the table because he always held her hand across the table now when they went out for dinner and then…
She chewed on her thumbnail.
Or she could do it simply. Go to him now and say it.
Find him wherever he was, probably in his room, or the guildhall, sprawled somewhere with Natsu getting into trouble as a matter of principle and just tell him. Walk up to him and say the words and watch his face and see what happened.
She imagined his face.
She couldn't wait to see what it looked like when she told him this.
She had a plan.
Well, she actually had three plans, ranked in order of preference, depending on where she would find him.
Juvia climbed to the second-floor landing of Gray's building and took a breath before she knocked on his apartment door.
He opened it in less than three seconds only wearing black sweatpants, and his hair still a little damp from a shower, holding a book with his thumb marking the page, and he took one look at her face and smiled brightly before he said, "hi baby."
Juvia burst into tears at his pet name for her.
"What the," he was panicked and she had both hands over her face to avoid looking at him.
She was aware, distantly, that this was not how any of her plans had begun. Gray's book hit the floor somewhere and then his hands were on her head, and he was pulling her inside and saying her name in the careful, low voice he used when he was trying not to alarm her further, which was in itself made her cry harder.
"Juvia. Talk to me," he steered her to the sofa, sat her down, crouched in front of her so he was at her level. "Are you hurt? Did something happen?"
She shook her head.
"Did someone —"
She shook her head again, more vigorously.
"Then what's wrong?"
"Juvia is sorry," she managed. "There were… There were several plans, and none of them started like this, and —" Her voice shook. She pressed her hands harder over her face as her voice wobbled out her words, "Juvia is ruining it."
She felt him shift, and then the cushion beside her dipped as he sat down, and his arm came around her shoulders, solid and steady. "You're not ruining anything," he spoke softly. "Just tell me what's going on so I can help you with it."
"Every time Juvia thinks about telling you she —" Another sob, unexpected, wrenched out of her chest. "She does this."
"Right," he pulled her closer. "Come here, it's going to be alright, sweeteheart. Just breathe through it." She turned her face into his shoulder and felt him rest his cheek against the top of her head, and he didn't say anything else for a moment, just held her, and that was somehow worse, because he was so good at this, so steady and completely there for her, and she loved him so much she could barely contain it on a normal day but today was not a normal day.
He was going to make such a good father.
She cried harder.
"Should I —" He paused. "What do I do here?"
The laugh that came out of her was wet and helpless. She felt him exhale, with relief probably that she was capable of laughing, and his arm tightened briefly around her.
"There you go," he said quietly.
Juvia lifted her face from his shoulder to see his face and her eyes filled again immediately.
"Why —" he started.
"Juvia is trying," she said, half-laughing, half not. "Juvia is trying very hard to stop."
"Yeah, I can see that," he replied then reached up and brushed his thumb under her eye. "Take your time."
She took a shaky breath. Then another. She straightened up, just slightly, and reached into the pocket of her cardigan with shaky fingers, and she closed her hand around the small plastic stick she had wrapped carefully in tissue paper before she left, because she had intended to present it properly with words, but none of that had happened.
She unwrapped it and held it out to him.
He looked down at it. He looked at her then looked back down at it.
"Is this —" His voice came out strange. "Juvia. Is this what I think it is?"
She hummed her confirmation, throat too tight to actually say yes.
Gray stared at the test.
She watched his face move through something she had never seen on it before, something new and uncharted, and she memorized every movement of it the way she always did because she was selfish about him and she wanted to keep this one moment forever.
He laughed like he couldn't believe the whole situation and he pressed the back of his hand against his mouth for a moment like he was trying to contain it, and then he gave up and didn't.
"Oh my god," he said with a wide smile growing across his face as he stared at the small piece of plastic.
"You are happy?" She hadn't meant it to come out, but she had to know.
He took her face in both hands, and she went still, looking up at him, "I'm so happy. This is…. This is amazing."
"It is?" she whispered, tears appearing in the corners of her eyes again at the confirmation.
He kissed her forehead, her cheek, the corner of her lips. She felt his hands tremble, just slightly, and loved him for it.
"Amazing," he said again, against her hair, like the word was the only one he had. "We're gonna have a baby."
"We are," she giggled and he placed his forehead on hers. "We're a family now."
Juvia sat in the circle of his arms and held onto the quiet joy of the moment before everything changed. She reached up and covered his hand with hers where it rested against her hair.
The quiet lasted maybe another minute.
Then Gray said in a surprisingly serious tone, "how did you get here?"
Juvia blinked and pulled back, "Juvia walked."
"You walked. Alone?"
"It's not very far form her dorm room."
"It's dark."
"It's the middle of the day." She double checked his window to make sure she was right about that and saw the sun peaking out behind the thick clouds now as the rain fell lighter.
"Well, it's dangerous out there."
"Juvia is a mage with —"
"Juvia is pregnant," he snapped back. "Plus, it's raining out there!"
"Juvia… is the Rain Woman," now she was just confused at what he was stressed over.
"That's not —" He pulled back further to look at her properly. "What if something had happened? You should have called me and I would have come to get you, I would have —" He stood up abruptly, took two steps, turned around, came back. "You should have called me first."
"Juvia did not want to say it over the phone," she said with a pout, her tears long forgotten in her new confusion.
"Then you should have… I don't know, I would have come to you no matter what you wanted me for, you didn't have to tell —" He pressed his hand over his mouth, looked at the ceiling briefly. "Okay. Okay, you're here, you're fine, it's all fine."
"It is fine," Juvia agreed, smiling up at him.
He pointed at her. "Don't look so pleased."
"Juvia is not."
"You're smiling."
"Because she is happy to carry your child."
"You walked here alone —"
"And arrived safely," she cut in and grabbed his finger, "and you are very worried about her, which Juvia finds very sweet."
He made a noise and sat back down beside her, she leaned into him immediately, which he had known she would, and his arm came back around her like it always did.
"The dorms are way too far away from here," he said, after a moment.
Juvia looked up. "Hm?"
"The Fairy Hill dorms. They're too far from where I live and I don't want that," he was doing it again. "And I'm on the third floor too. That's a lot of stairs for you to climb so that's not good either."
"Pregnant women have been climbing stairs throughout all of recorded history, Gray-sama," she rolled her eyes, but allowed him to continue to voice his spiraling thoughts.
"We need to find somewhere else." He said it like it was obvious, like it was simply the next logical step, like he hadn't just casually proposed that they move in together while staring at the middle distance. "Somewhere closer to the guild, maybe. Enough space for," he stopped. "For everything."
"You want to live with Juvia again?"
"Well, yeah," he half smiled at the idea."We've done it before and we're having a kid now. We need somewhere to put it," he shrugged a little too casually.
"It?!" She shoved him away.
"You know what I mean." He was still not quite looking at her, which meant he was embarrassed. "Somewhere that's ours this time. We should have done it already, honestly, I don't know why we didn't just," He exhaled harshly. "I should have sorted this out for us already."
"You could not have known to sort this out," she said surely, "Juvia only found out before she came over here, so there's no way you would have."
"Before today in general, I mean. We've been," He gestured vaguely, which covered the entire past stretch of their relationship. "I should have just… yeah. Before this."
Juvia tucked herself closer against his side and said nothing, because she was warm and happy and he was spiraling very nicely and she saw no reason to interrupt.
"And you need to eat more," he said. "You only had half a bowl of rice at the guild yesterday."
"Juvia was not very hungry yesterday!"
"That's going to have to change." He reached across and took her hand, turned it over, looked at it like he was assessing something. "We should talk to Porlyusica. Or there's probably a healer in town who specializes, I'll find out who, I'll ask Levy, she'll know —"
"She will tell Gajeel, who will tell everyone in the guild within four minutes."
Gray opened his mouth. Closed it. "...I'll ask someone else."
"Juvia thinks that is wise."
"Wendy," he said. "I'll ask Wendy. She won't —" He paused. "She'll cry a little but she won't tell anyone."
Juvia laughed softly. He seemed to take this as permission to continue.
"You shouldn't be going on any missions for a while. Maybe — I'll talk to the master about —"
"Juvia is perfectly capable of — "
"I know you're capable," he said, with the patience of someone who knew he was walking into a fight and was choosing to walk into it anyway. "That's not the point."
"What is the point?" She huffed.
"I want to do this right. All of it. I want — " His jaw tightened briefly, the way it did when he was saying something it cost him to say. "I want you taken care of. Both of you. I want to… be the one do that."
Juvia looked at him for a long moment.
Then she lifted his hand and pressed it flat against her stomach the same way he had earlier, and held it there.
"Gray-sama is already doing that," she said quietly. "You always do and you always will."
He stared at their hands. Swallowed.
"We still need a new place," he muttered, but his voice had gone rough at the edges.
"We can find one," she said.
"I'll start looking tomorrow," he said, with great finality. Then, after a beat, slightly less panicked, "is there anything you need? Are you hungry? I could probably make something, or I can go and get — "
"Juvia does not need anything," she said, and meant it entirely.
She was sitting in his apartment with his hand warm against her and the whole enormous future stretched out ahead of them, and he was already panicking his way toward it with everything he had, which was the most Gray thing she had ever witnessed, which meant it was also one of her favorite things she had ever witnessed.
She pressed her cheek against his shoulder.
"Although," she added, after a moment.
"Yeah?" He perked up.
"Juvia would like that tea you mentioned," she looked up at him with wide eyes. "She thinks… the baby is cold."
He squinted as she tapped her fingers over his on her stomach, and he sighed in defeat. "I'll try but you never like it when I do it."
He kissed her cheek and extracted himself carefully, made sure she was settled nicely against the cushions, looked at her once more like she might vanish if he turned his back and then went to make the tea he absolutely did not know how to make right, muttering something under his breath about Juvia's affinity for hot drinks.
Juvia pulled her knees up to her chest, rested her chin on them, and watched him go with a smile so wide it almost hurt.
None of her plans had gone the way she'd thought out at all.
Reality had been so much better this time.