His boyfriend was still sat huddled in the armchair, not having moved since Natsu had first forced him to sit down before going to call the police when it was clear someone had broken in. Gray had his head in his hands, and was staring at the carpet, and while he was quiet, the slight tremble to his shoulders betrayed him. He was crying. Not over the damage that been done to the laundry room window where the thief or thieves had got in, or for the state of the place, their belongings and life strewn around without a care. Not even over most of what had been taken, because that could be replaced with time.

Everything but one item. The most precious thing he had, aside from Natsu he’d once said with a laugh and a kiss, as though he’d thought Natsu would get jealous.

The necklace that he wore more often than he wore clothes. A silver sword that had been made from the salvaged remnants of his mother’s jewellery, with its pretty blue stone, specially made by a specialist jeweller to house some of his parents’ ashes.

It was the worst kind of luck that the one night Gray had forgotten to put it back on after showering and getting ready to go out, was the one night they were robbed. Worse his boyfriend had realised when they had got to the restaurant, and he hadn’t even needed to say anything as Natsu had understood the moment Gray’s fist had pressed against his chest where the sword normally rested. He’d even offered to run back and get it, it wasn’t as though it had been that far – which made it even worse now in retrospect or told Gray that he would wait if he wanted to get it, knowing how protective his boyfriend was of it. He’d seen the internal debate, before Gray had sighed and squared his shoulders, and said it was fine, and that Erza would kill them if they were any later than they already were.

If only we’d come back…

Admittedly they might have run into the thieves themselves, but Natsu didn’t care about that, spoiling for a fight as he looked at his hurting partner. If he was replaying the night and second guessing their choices, he didn’t want to think about what was going around in Gray’s head.

Instead, he quietly moved across the living room, making sure not to stand on anything breakable before kneeling down in front of the armchair. He didn’t speak. There were really no words that could make this better, and for a second, he thought guiltily about Igneel’s scarf, currently lying on their bed where he had set it after making sure it was still there. A scarf holding no value to the burglars, although it would need washing as it had been soaked in aftershave from the bottles that had been swept off the top of their chest of drawers. But it was here and safe, and the necklace wasn’t; and he hadn’t needed the policewoman who had taken their statements shaking her head, to know that the hopes of getting anything back was low. Not zero, but low.

So, he didn’t speak, instead leaning up and wrapping his arms around Gray and just holding him. It was an awkward position and made his back ache, but he didn’t move, didn’t speak and didn’t push. Eventually, Gray shifted, arms creeping around Natsu in return as he buried his head against Natsu’s shoulder, and now Natsu could feel the quiet sobs wracking him and feel the dampness of tears against his shirt. He closed his eyes, wishing he could make this better, and held Gray close, pressing a kiss to dark hair.  A promise that he was still there.

How do I fix this?

**

That had been nearly a week ago, and while their apartment was more or less back to normal aside from the wooden board protecting the smashed window before the glazier came in a couple of days, to Natsu it felt as though they were tapped in limbo. Gray was twitchy and withdrawn, barely eating and speaking even less, disappearing whenever one of their friends tried to offer comfort over what had happened, yet appearing hopefully every time there was a phone call or a knock on the door in case there was news. When he did sleep it was restless and disturbed by nightmares, and Natsu knew his parents were on his mind after hearing Gray call out to them after a particularly bad one, which had left them both in the living room cuddling for the rest of the night as there was no way in hell Natsu had been going back to sleep and leaving him alone.

“I should’ve gone back for it…” Gray whispered as they sat in the living room that evening, face pressed against Natsu’s shoulder, the words muffled between them.

“There was no way we could’ve known this was going to happen,” Natsu murmured, heart aching at the sheer guilt in those words, trying to share the blame as best he could – even though he knew neither of them were at fault, it was pure, shitty luck.

“But…”

“I know,” Natsu said, and just held on tight.

*

The next day when Gray was at work, despite having barely slept again, Natsu went digging. He needed to do something, although he knew there was no fixing this. It wasn’t as though he could just walk into the jewellers and replace what had been lost. But somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered Gray had mentioned that he’d designed it, laughing about how bad his design sketches had been, but that the guy who had made the necklace had taken them and made it into a work of art. And if Natsu knew anything about his boyfriend, it was that he would keep something like that, because of the memories attached.

It took a while, because even though everything had been tidied away it wasn’t all quite back in the right place yet, but in the end, he tracked down the old box file that Gray had shown him once, full of random photos and documents and memories. It was fuller now, as Natsu had added a couple of bits too it, mostly to do with Igneel and his disappearance, more so as not to lose them than to treasure them, but Gray had smiled – the warm one that lit up his eyes whenever he felt Natsu was setting down more roots in this home they now shared. Carefully he shifted through the file, not wanting to stick his nose into anything that wasn’t really his, and really hoping that his hunch was right.

He was starting to think it wasn’t, nearly at the bottom when he found it. An old ratty sketchbook covered in stickers, and with Gray’s name on it in messy handwriting, in the distinctive way a child claims things. Natsu traced the name for a moment, before taking a deep breath and opening it. Most of it as he flicked through was typical childish doodles, and then it shifted, and Natsu knew that was after the fire that had destroyed Gray’s childhood home and taken his parents and childhood with it. The pictures were more solemn, lacking in colour, and then in the last few pages he found it. He had to bite the inside of his cheek not to laugh, as the sketches were bad, but at the same time he could see the essence of Gray’s necklace in them, and he wondered if his boyfriend realised just how much of his design had gone into it.

Then he struck gold. Pressed between the last pages of the sketchbook was an old jeweller’s receipt. A receipt for a custom piece of jewellery and his eyebrows rose at the price, before dismissing it and focusing on the details.

A custom piece of jewellery and two glass stones with inclusions.

Two, not one.

Natsu stared at it for a long moment. Did Gray know? Had he forgotten? But he had been quite young when the necklace had been made, which meant he’d probably been helped… the box file ended up on the floor, papers scattered as he lunged for the bed and his phone. Punching in the number that he had been forced to accept at a dinner a couple of months ago, nearly mucking it up several times, and all but vibrating as it started to ring.

“Hello?”

“Ur?” Natsu said to the woman he had only met twice, but who had wrapped him the tightest hug the first time they had met, and thanked him for making Gray smile, and his voice caught in his throat. “I need your help.”

Please help me let Gray smile again.

****

Nearly two weeks later:

Gray hesitated as he slipped his key into the lock, staring at the front door as though it was a trap. He hated that his home – their home – now felt like that, but unable to shake the memory of that awful night when they’d got home to find the place trashed, and his necklace… his throat closed up. He knew it was gone. The police had as good as said there was no chance of getting their stuff back, Natsu had tried to soften it, and Gray loved him for it, but he knew deep down in his bones that it was gone. It made him sick to think of it out there somewhere with someone who had no idea what it was, the story behind it, the people behind it. And what would his parents think if they could see all this? He closed his eyes at that thought and rested his head against the door.

It felt like he had lost them all over again, and he knew that was silly. They had been gone years. Yet it felt like that old wound had been ripped open again, bleeding out in nightmares and quiet, stolen moments, sobbed out against Natsu when his boyfriend caught him. He hadn’t even been able to tell Ur and Lyon what had happened, he wasn’t even sure if they knew about the burglary, although Lyon always seemed to be in the know one way or another.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d stood there, but he about jumped out of his skin when the door suddenly swung open; and he stepped back instinctively, only to find Natsu stood there looking at him with worried eyes. He tried to smile, he really did, but instead he could feel his expression crumpling and Natsu bless him didn’t say a word, just pulled him inside and into a tight hug.

His rock. Gray burrowed his face against Natsu and just focused on breathing. Natsu was the reason he hadn’t gone to pieces more than he had, his boyfriend never pushing, never diminishing the lost, but quietly refusing to let him shoulder blame that wasn’t his to bear. He had shared every disturbed night, even after long shifts and awful days at work.

Natsu wasn’t pushing now either, holding him as though there was all the time in the world, and yet there was a tension in his boyfriend’s body. As though he was practically vibrating about something but trying to hold it in, and after a long moment, Gray pulled back and looked at him. “What is it?”

“Come with me,” Natsu said, grabbing Gray’s hand and pulling him along. Not knowing what else to do Gray followed, only to come up short as they entered the living room to find Ur sat on the sofa waiting for them, smiling as she took in their linked hands before her gaze met his and her expression turned into something soft and sad. Natsu released him, letting Ur rise and come and pull Gray into a tight hug, the kind that makes your bones creak and he felt his eyes burning as he clung to her.

“Silly child,” she scolded as they eventually parted, reaching up to brush away tears he wasn’t aware were falling. “You should have called me.”

“I didn’t know what to say,” he admitted, looking down and she clicked her tongue and stuck a finger under his chin, tilting his head up so he was looking at her.

“You say it however you need to, as messy as you like,” she said. “Just because you’re all grown up now, doesn’t change the fact that you can come to me and scream and rage, or whatever you need to do. Although I know Natsu has helped with that,” she said, with a smile at his boyfriend, and Gray managed a whispered laugh as Natsu promptly went pink about the ears.

“I know…I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise, just stop trying to deal with everything alone,” she chided, lifting an eyebrow and waiting until he nodded. Both of them knowing that he was too stubborn for it to ever be that simple. “Now, speaking of your wonderful boyfriend.” Gray was starting to wonder when Natsu had managed to charm her so thoroughly, not that he minded as he’d been a little worried in the early days that they might not hit it off. “I believe he has something for you.”

“Natsu?” Gray blinked, turning to look at his boyfriend who was still slightly pink but smiling.

“Sit down,” Natsu ordered, and not knowing what else to do Gray obeyed, trying to quell the traitorous part of his heart that wondered if the impossible had happened. Once he was settled, Natsu fetched something from the bookcase and came and crouched down in front of him, much as he had the night of the burglary. “I can’t replace the necklace that was taken, and I wish I could,” Natsu said softly, turning more serious than Gray thought he’d ever seen him. “But I hope this might help just a little,” he added, pressing a small blue velvet jewellery box into Gray’s hands.

Gray’s hands trembled as his fingers curled around it, just holding it for a moment. He studied Natsu, trying to make sense of what his boyfriend was up to, there was a nervousness beneath the solemnness that didn’t help his own nerves, but when he glanced at Ur, she was smiling and watching them with soft eyes. Swallowing, he looked down at the box, fingers stroking over the velvet for a moment, before he took a deep breath and opened it.

It was his necklace, but not. The material was a lighter silver, although the design was the same; and whereas the stone on his original one had been circular, this one was a teardrop. He stared at it, before his breath caught and he leaned closer, studying the stone. At first, he’d thought it had to be a trick of the light, but no, it had the same the inclusions that his other one had. “Is this…?” He looked at Natsu, who nodded. “But h-how…?”

“You probably don’t remember.” It was Ur who replied, stepping close. “When we had your necklace made, I ordered two stones. I guess with everything that we’d both lost, I wanted to try and make sure we held on to what we could. You wanted the round stone in your necklace, so I put this one in a secure lockbox just in case it was ever needed.”

“I didn’t know…” Gray whispered, fingers shaking as he finally reached out and touched the necklace, carefully lifting it out of the box. It was lighter than the old one, but the design aside from the shape of the stone was the same, and his eyes burned as he looked up at Natsu. “How did you…?” How did you know Ur had the stone? How did you make it so perfectly? How….?

“I went snooping,” Natsu admitted. “I remembered you talking about how you designed it and laughing about how bad your sketches were, and I know you keep things like that, so I went and rooted through the file. And there was a receipt in there too, that mentioned two stone…so I called Ur,” he shrugged nervously. “She brought me the stone, and I took the sketches and some photos of the necklace, and we found a jeweller who could replicate the design, as the original one retired a few years ago.”

The burning had become fresh tears, and Gray made no effort to banish them, as he stared at Natsu. At this man who had remembered a throwaway story from early in their dates and turned it into a miracle. He looked down at the necklace. It wasn’t the same, and it didn’t erase the pain of losing the original one, or the way his stomach sank at the thought of someone else wearing it; but it was in some ways more precious, a coming together of his old family and his new and future one. He swallowed thickly, trying to get his voice to work, and it took him a couple of attempts before he managed to whisper. “Would you put it on for me?”

Natsu smiled and gently took the necklace out of Gray’s hands. Slow and careful as he unclasped it, before slipping it into place, leaning forward so that he could reach around and clasp it into place. Gray felt it settle into place over his chest, a different weight and yet familiar, and he was intensely aware of Natsu’s warmth, of the smell and presence of him; and with a soft sob he reached out and pulled Natsu into a bruising hug, the necklace trapped between them. “Thank you,” he whispered, the words not enough to encompass the feelings bubbling up his chest, and Natsu must have know because he hugged him tight.

“Always.”