Not so Berry - Grey Gen in a nutshell

Grayson Berry's childhood was filled with the words "ambition", "hard work" and "perfection". Descending from a ski gold medalist, an astronaut, a president and a world renowned scientist, not to mention his father being of strict Komorebi-style upbringing, made it so that everyone's expectations for him were set way too high from the day he came into this world, and the more people expected from him the more he was driven to do absolutely nothing.

This was what made him run away from home at the age of 17. The only person who would take him in without telling his parents was his grandmother Rouge, so he caught the last train to San Myshuno.

He last saw his grandmother when they attended her marriage so many years before (the twins were just starting to go to kindergarten and he just started elementary school back then) but she was kinder and more understanding than he ever expected her to be.

Rouge and Psaro had moved into the most luxurious penthouse in San Myshuno and had plenty of space for their grandson, but they didn't exactly act like responsible adults: they felt that Greyson was old enough to take responsibility for his own actions and let him do whatever while they enjoyed their time together.

Which meant that Grayson literally did nothing but sing, browse the web and swim all day long. Sometimes he went downtown for festivals, but not often.

Unfortunately this meant that he was beginning to ignore the person who had once been his boyfriend, Chaim. Sick of the way they had been working for a while now, he gave Gray an ultimatum about their relationship, but Grayson chose to end it there and then. He still felt something for him, but he was becoming annoying and it was best to just let him go. Or so he chose to tell himself.

The truth was that he had been seeing someone else behind Chaim's back. And he was very much crushing on him.

Quincy was lowkey strange -he was purple and glowed, for one- but he was easygoing, fun and a great listener. And he was older and more experienced too, which was a bonus.

He turned to be an alien, and Grayson wasn't surprised- he was no stranger to their existence.

Then tragedy struck when everything seemed to be going smoothly towards Gray's birthday.

Psaro ed away silently and suddenly, which sent Rouge into an abyss of desperation. She spent several months crying about how the ing of Psaro was unfair, about how she was supposed to go first because she was older and about how she should've had to marry him much sooner. Grayson didn't know Psaro as well, so he wasn't as affected, but it still left him sad.

Rouge woke up unusually cheerful on the day of Gray's 18th birthday. She had a talk with him to tell him that adult life awaited and that she was proud of him no matter what, then she went to bake him a cake and wanted to see him blow the candles. Unfortunately, just later that very evening, Rouge herself ed away. She seemed peaceful, finally.

Gray could do nothing but put her urn next to Psaro's and mourn her ing on his own.

As he was going through Rouge and Psaro's clothes and stuff to check if there was something he could donate to charity -Rouge had asked him to a few days before ing- Grayson found an envelope with his name on it, along with a letter handwritten by Rouge. The envelope contained a check with a crazy amount of money (50k) and Rouge explained in the letter that they were to help him pay his bills for the first few months, but Grayson made his mind up pretty quickly. He knew that Yasmin knew where Rouge lived and she would probably come to see the house (it belonged to her now) so he took his things and fled into a decently sized flat in

Adult life was not as bad as Grayson expected. Granted, he still had part of his grandmother's money and needed to use it from time to time, but he was doing fairly well with himself and with the money he gained working his way up in the league.

He was an athlete now, and a fairly good one too -even made it on television. He hoped his parents saw how well known he was becoming and would understand that he could make it without them breathing down his neck.

His relationship with Quincy was going steady and, after a moment of hesitation on both sides, it also ventured into more adult fun.

More than a couple years into their relationship, and a few weeks away from Gray's 22nd birthday, he suddenly fell sick. He would suddenly throw up at any time during the day and his abdomen was swelling. It also didn't help that Quincy seemed to have disappeared during that period, leaving him to deal with this on his own.

Coach got incredibly worried. He was scared that one of his most shiny stars was falling ill to cancer and basically forced Grayson to have a checkup done.

It was not a tumor. He was "just" six weeks pregnant.

He thought explaining it to the team would be a mess, but they were pretty simpathetic about it.

Breaking the news to Quincy was the worst part. Turns out that he knew that he could potentially get Gray pregnant because sixamnians didn't need an uterus to implant, but didn't care enough to tell him nor did he care about the baby. He said it was either him or it.

Grayson chose the child inside of him, and his relationship with Quincy ended with them blocking each other everywhere.

After the initial shock, Grayson began to think about what being a parent meant, about how it would change his life and about how he would treat this child. He wanted to try not to be an overbearing figure for it, just let it make its own decisions and face its own mistakes.

The very first person he talked about this with was Chaim. They had rekindled their friendship after he had been a bit of an arse to his bud, really.

His first advice was to tell his parents, because they kinda deserved to know they were having a grandchild.

At this point, though still mad at them, he couldn't deny that he missed them all. Ruka, Hikari, his mother and hell, even his father.

It still took him a while to decide to do it, though - he was well into his second trimester when he decided to tough it up and show up at their front door.

As usual neither parent was there. Figures. Ruka and Hikari still lived with them though, and were both currently off work when he swung by.

They didn't believe his story at first - thought he purchased a fake belly to prank them- but it became obvious real fast that he was not faking it.

They spent time bonding and catching up on each others' past years (the twins seemed to have grown out of their bitchy phase, if anything) and they told him that their father was out in Komorebi (something about a meeting with the big boss on a huge sale he made) but their mother was bound to come home any minute now.

Grayson met her at the doorstep as he was preparing to go away (he felt that he was overstaying his welcome) and he expected her to react worse, to cuss or to yell.

Instead she just walked up to him and hugged him close.

He ended up going there several times more during his pregnancy. His bond with his mother really strengthened and they spent more time together than they had ever spent as he grew up.

As one would say, better later than never.

It was her that broke the pregnancy news to Kiyoshi.

She said he took it well.

Rika told him that he cussed about how the hell his son, of any of his kids, got pregnant for half an hour before downing a glass of sake and realizing it wasn't too bad of a situation, then went to sleep.

He dated a guy named Dustin Broke during the pregnancy. He thought he was a nice guy, but soon found out that he only wanted to exploit his fame and money because he had some debt to pay, so he stopped going out with him there and then: with a child on the way and no one else by his side, he really couldn't afford to have a man like that in his house.

That year's Harvestfest rolled around and Grayson was excited to know that his whole family was going to be over. He made sure to make everything extra nice and extra clean so that his parents wouldn't have to complain about anything.

On that very carefully planned day, unborn baby Berry decided that it was not going to wait for another day to roll around. Grayson had been having little cramps here and there and knew it was a matter of days, but the speed of everything surprised him - he was itted in the hospital at midday, had his baby in his arms by two pm and was back home by six. Checking the baby's health literally took more time than getting it out.

It was a baby girl who was given the name Primrose, Prim for short. It was the name of a girl from a book he had read as a kid.

Too bad Grayson never finished the trilogy, as that Primrose's fate was less than pleasant.

The first year of Prim's life changed Grayson upside down. He was all about her, pushed himself to be better just for her and tried to be as present as possible in her early development, to the point that their bond was gradually getting closer and closer. Prim wouldn't sleep if he didn't read her a story first, but aside from that she was pretty independent.

Granted, parenthood really took a toll on Gray sometimes and Chaim was more than happy to help take his mind off of it with a good session of karaoke. Grayson still liked to practice on his own from time to time and he was getting quite good too.

Eventually, Chaim moved in with them. The poor man had just lost his mother and had been told by his older sister, who inherited the house, to basically suck it up, pack and find his own place to live in on a 24 hours notice and Grayson just wasn't going to let his best friend be homeless.

Chaim promised that it would just be for a few weeks.

The "few weeks" became a lifetime when a spark between the two that had never died lit their mutual feelings once again. They were comprehensively careful about this at first, Chaim especially - he already suffered enough, poor thing - but as they found out, it was hard to keep their hands off each other.

This was the same period when Grayson felt that his body had reached his peak performance. It was a nice sense of accomplishment, like his lifetime wish had been granted. He knew training now was just a matter of preserving his shape and settled on a new goal: to be a super parent, one that Prim would love very much.

Prim and, maybe, other children too. He began thinking about how many children in the world never even got the chance of having a family, and it really saddened him. Could he change each one of their lives? Probably not. Could he change at least one? Yes, definitely.

Chaim and Grayson agreed that adopting another child would be nice, but the flat where they currently lived wasn't big enough for a family of four unless Prim shared her room with her sibling, which wouldn't do because they were thinking of adopting a boy. They had to move somewhere bigger.

Grayson's raise following his transfer to a way better placed team was the occasion they were waiting for. They packed their things, sold off the apartment (not without a bit of sadness) and moved to a quiet suburban area in a town called Willow Creek.

Finally having enough space for a bigger family, Grayson and Chaim went to the adoption center with the intent of adopting a baby boy and came home with two baby boys: Evan and Cullen Berry.

They were the exact same age, 12 days old, but weren't twins - just born the same day from different teen mothers who wanted nothing to do with them.

Chaim was hired as an artist for the local art gallery, Grayson continued getting promotions and years quietly ed. Primrose soon turned six and started going to primary school. Her teachers thought that she was a natural talent in most things she tried, but Grayson found that her biggest problem was that she just couldn't make a decision and stick with it.

The house soon became too small for the five of them, at least according to Grayson, and they expanded it to give the children a bigger space to grow up, not before taking the usual commemorative photo

As a side note, Hikari and Ruka lived very close to each other in the same neighborhood and moved out when Ruka found a boyfriend.

Incidentally this man was Gray's ex - Dustin. He probably thought that if he couldn't get his money he could try getting his sister's. Ruka of course found out and broke up, but not before he left her something to him by.

She gave birth to a daughter about a year younger than Cullen and Evan and called her Poppy Berry.

Hikari helped her for the first months and it made her wish she had a child of her own, as long as it was over the age of diapers and powder milk. The solution was adoption, and in a few months she brought home her new 8 years old son, Jayce Berry.

Despite being two years apart, him and Prim got along very well and were in fact the closest of friends.

Between parenting, practicing for his games and his karaoke nights and finding appropriately rated movies for family movie night (it was harder than you can imagine and Evan fell asleep midway most of the time), Grayson realized that he wasn't really paying much attention to Chaim, again.

It wasn't bad like the first time, mind you, they still cuddled and whatnot, but he felt that it just wasn't enough.

He proposed to him on a date, the first alone they'd had in a while, and eloped a few days later to avoid attention from paparazzis. Only their children and families were present.

He ended up leaving the movie duty to Prim after a bit. Regretted it when she picked a gorey zombie movie after being dared by cousin Jayce.

The next few years were pretty uneventful. Lots of romance, lots of family love, and to be fair lots of money. Chaim's paintings spread outside the circle of usual investors and he became locally famous, Grayson moved to another, better team and Evan and Cullen started attending elementary school.

Much like Grayson, Cullen was a real slob and their messes drove neat Chaim crazy, but while Grayson did care about his personal hygiene, their son seemed not to. He often had to be forced to shower after coming home smelly and sweaty.

As for Evan, he had always been a bit of a glutton, eating when he wasn't supposed to, but it worsened as he grew up. They were unsure what this was about and decided to counter his habits by not buying the sweets and soda he liked so much. They weren't good for any of them anyway.

Prim started attending middle school that same year and seemed to finally like one of her hobbies more than the other twenty: dancing.

Gray found an old album of family pictures he thought he had left behind at his parents' in a dusty box while rummaging. He was so happy that he decided to display all of them: this was his family, and he was proud of it.

They were all growing rather quickly, and even though he didn't look as old yet - his healthy lifestyle probably helped- he did feel old now.

When Prim started 7th grade, she got into Henry Puffer big time. She carried her scarf everywhere, talked about it with everyone and read the books half a dozen times in the same summer.

Poppy started school and Jayce was into his freshman year of high school at this point.

He had had a huge growth spurt that made him look older than he actually was and he was fairly popular among his classmates.

Chaim and Grayson were getting older too.

There wasn't a day ing without Grayson thinking how lucky he was to be given a second chance after mes so bad with him, and how lucky he was to have such a wonderful husband and family.

Despite starting to notice the obvious changes that his body was going through, Grayson was still considered the MVP of his team and on the road to being nominated best professional athlete. He was afraid that his aging would hinder his performances, but it didn't seem to be the case.

Surely enough, Prim soon started high school too. She was just as much a good student as she had been all his life and continued to go out with Jayce, who had a small group of friends now.

The kids Gray saw more often over at his place were an albino girl named Bianca, who was quite a talent with a guitar in her hands, and a neighbor teen named Thorne.

Bianca wasn't really talkative and sometimes ignored adults completely, too engrossed in her own mind to really make sense of her surroundings. If he didn't know better, Gray would've assumed she was always stoned and/or drunk, but as it turns out she just was a little light-headed, or so Prim said anyway.

Thorne was a different deal. He was polite and well educated, but always went on and on saying how his mother was this hotshot goddess that was made human and had to regain her status and that his dad was some sort of vampire -A pathological liar, obviously.

He had seen the kid's mother, and while she was indeed a beauty out of this world, she worked her ass off like anybody else in the neighborhood.

They often hung out in the Blue Waters nightclub - where Grayson himself used to hang out at their age- and while he trusted his daughter, he couldn't help but be very worried.

Grayson's worries were soon set aside as his life spiraled back into the usual vortex of trying to be the best parent and upping his charm to impress the media, while at the same time keeping his marriage steady and steamy.

Prim, on the other hand, found out how good alcohol could be if you had just enough. You could always tell when she was drunk because she would start dancing in front of the mirrors... Of course, she was naturally good at that too.

Finally the time for the annual Best MVP prize came, and Grayson's hard work turned out to be a huge help for him: he won. Won! He actually couldn't believe it!!

The prize came with a huge shot in his notoriety and his income, along with a nice shining trophy.

Unfortunately, his joy was short lived.

Evan received the call. No one else's phone seemed to have signal.

The Family Tree :)