A Collection of You & Me and Us ✔️

b e c a u s e s h e c a r e s

*This one shot of the Gruvia family is to spread how grave this pandemic is.

❅

b e c a u s e  s h e  c a r e s | 18

He was with his fourteen year old son, Gris, in the living room, waiting for the nightly call from his wife, Juvia. He didn't know how, but somehow, Gray ended up being a parent. He didn't regret it one bit, because he's been able to build a home with the woman he cared for and ended up marrying.

Still, that didn't mean he knew every single thing that came with being a dad. For example, his son sneaking out past curfew to hang out with his friends. Especially, since the new covid-19 rules, regulations and curfews had been established—and the fact that they were in the middle of a pandemic.

Gris was shaking his leg anxiously. "I don't understand why I have to tell mom about this. I already apologized."

Gray regarded his son for a second. "Gris," he started. "You apologized, but you don't actually regret what you did."

His son narrowed his eyes. "An apology should be enough."

"No," Gray reprimanded. "I don't think you understand the gravity of what you did."

"I do!" Gris protested vehemently. Aside from having all his father's physical features, he did get one thing from his mother—her stubbornness. "Why do we have to call mom? She's working. If anything, we will worry her."

Gray knew where Gris was coming from. Juvia was an essential worker. She was a doctor at the New York Medical Center, one of the biggest hospitals in the state. The way things were looking, she wasn't going to be coming home any time soon. Unlike Gray, who was an architect, he had the privilege of working from home.

Juvia not being home had made things a little harder around the house for Gray. He had to learn how to cook and do laundry....and basically every home chore. He didn't mind doing it...he just wished Juvia was with him teaching him how to do them.

"Your mother has to know," Gray pressed on.

"But, dad!" Gris protested. "Mom is going to get really angry!"

"I know."

"At both of us!"

"Yes."

"If anyone is more scared of mom than me, it's you!"

"That's not true," Gray lied. But to tell the truth, he wasn't excited to tell Juvia that Gris had snuck out under his supervision.

When it came to her child, she was more than overprotective. Once, when Gris had accidentally gotten a black eye when he'd been running on the playground in elementary school, she'd gone up to the school board, and ended up having the playground removed. Thankfully, after a month of ice cream that Gray had bought, Gris's classmates were able to forgive them.

Juvia was a powerful woman in her late thirties. She was a doctor, head of the neighborhood community, and the chair of the school PTO at Gris's high school. She always held everything together—it was a little intimidating if Gray had to confess. Yet, when the virus hit the United States after originating from Wuhan, China, for some reason this was the one thing Gray had found his wife struggling with.

"Juvia has always known what she is doing. She is always in control of the situation," she had told him the night before she had to leave for the hospital. She'd held a glass of wine in her hand. They had been sitting on the kitchen table, discussing how things were going to start working out now that he was working from home, and she would be working from anywhere but their home. "Even when she was chasing after Gray-sama, Juvia knew he would be hers eventually."