*summary lyrics from eros—bryarly bishop.
title: dolensia
summary: 'cause you love true and you love easy, and I... I can only love hard. —macao/cana/bacchus. for Laura.
dedication: for Laura.
(i'm sorry there are no boys playing some obscure sport in this, waaa. i'm also sorry this a month late, waaa. and i'm also sorry it took me so long to wish you a happy birthday, waaaaaaa.)
notes: the title is from dolere, which (I think) means 'to grieve' in latin? But idk who cares lol, it's pretty.
notes2: let's accept that everything I post up will be messy bc MY SOUL IS MESSY, okay? okay. /flies into sunset shipping overpowerful aloholics together to the end of my days/
dolensia
.
.
it's never been an easy thing for me to see how it goes, to play by ear, to let it be
—and it's never been an easy thing to do, 'cause if i'm honest,
there's no one alive who's earned my loving more than you.
.
"I just..." He raised a steady hand to cover his face, sighing deeply into his palm before pressing his fingers so hard to his brow they turned white. "I need space. We need space. 'Cause this, whatever the hell it is, isn't— it isn't working."
Cana curled her fingers into a tight fist by her side. Her throat felt too dry for speech, so her lips thinned into a terse line and she said nothing.
He continued, "I know I said I'd give it a try, Cana, but I can't. I'm sorry, but it's just not..."
He exhaled shakily. She met his gaze unflinchingly when he looked down at her, remaining silent.
"It's not... Sorry, Cana. This needs to stop."
She felt her lower lip begin to tremble, but quickly took a deep breath to disguise it. Relaxing her hands to rest on her hips suggestively, she let a slow, lazy smile curl her lips. "I don't think you mean that."
But of course he did. She knew he did. But she needed to show him it didn't affect her, so she leaned forward a little to give him a view of her cleavage, reminding him that she wasn't just a little girl anymore.
"I do," Macao said, his gaze not faltering from hers.
Damn it.
She let her smile widen into a lascivious smirk. "Are you quite sure? I was under the impression," she purred, closing the distance between them, "that you were having fun, Macao. It doesn't have to stop."
When she pressed her body against his, he sighed quietly before taking a step back. His warm hands gently gripped her shoulders, keeping her at arm's length. "It's not about fun, Cana."
"Oh? Because I'm not gonna lie, I was having lots of fun learning everything you had to teach me—"
"Enough," he said, a light smile hiding behind his lips. "Don't talk about that."
"Why not? Is it because you don't really want to stop, and you're just doing this to seem coy? I didn't peg you for that kind of guy, Macao. But," she trailed a finger up his chest tauntingly, "it's not so bad once in a while."
He smiled that fucking smile he always adopted when she teased him, as if he was indulging her. "Nothing like that."
She bit her lip, frustrated. What was he playing at? "Then what? You've had enough of playing with me, is that it? "
"Cana—"
"We fucked on enough guild tables, and you've gotten it out of your system now? What, the old man had enough fun with the 'little girl', huh?"
"No, that's not—"
"Because I know you're a real pervert at heart, but I didn't think you would go so far as to start using your guildmates. Is that really what I am to you? An anywhere-anytime fuck buddy?"
"Of course not!"
"Well, that's what it looks like!" She burst out, biting her lip and hating the fact that she was acting like a little kid. But she couldn't fucking help it. It took her years to get here, so why the hell was he acting like—... like he expected this to happen? "I-I told you I was..."
She was serious, damn it.
His eyes held nothing but kindness and understanding, and she hated it. "I know you wanted it to work out, but did you really think it would last between us? Neither of us are really the stuff of relationships, you know? And you're only eighteen, Cana. You can't let me hold you back forever, can you?"
Her silence spoke for her, but Cana doubted he could hear what it was screaming. He took one of her hands into his, rubbing slow circles into her wrist. "Of course I care for you; I've watched over you since you were six, for crying out loud. How could I not love you?"
But not like I love you. You didn't even give me a chance to prove it to you, you asshole.
And the way he was looking at her... Not like she was a woman at all. Just like she was a little girl, someone he had to look out for, someone he had to protect. "And being with you was nice, it really was... But we're not meant to be that way, you know? I can feel it. You know it, too. We're best at being friends. And you must know that you really are a very, very important friend to me. Always will be."
His smile was gentle.
Gentle.
As if she needed any of that
She took back her hand, waving it in the space between them dismissively. "Well, okay. If you insist." The grin was back in place, taking over her expression. "I'll miss the nights, but I'll take what I can get, I guess. But it is a shame; our bodies were really compatible, don't you think?"
When Macao just rolled his eyes, Cana laughed loudly, turning and flipping her hair carelessly. "I'll see you at the guild then. It definitely was fun. A good way to pass the nights where the guild was out of beer, right?"
"Jeez, you could at least pretend to care a bit more. I am sorry, you know."
But Macao was laughing now, and it just spurred her on. "And some of the things you showed me— woah! Did not expect that from an old guy like you, seriously." She looked back to see him rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, shaking his head at the ground, and smirked. "Really. Don't let this make things awkward. We just had to get rid of the undeniable sexual tension, right?"
He scoffed. "You're heartless, you know that?"
She winked at him before turning around to walk away. "Thank you," she grinned slyly, blowing him a kiss.
Thanks for nothing, you miserable bastard.
She didn't go back to Fairy Hills like she wanted to. No, she stuck it out at the guild the whole evening, drinking and laughing and pretending.
After all, she wasn't a little fucking girl, was she?
.
i was praying that you and me might end up together
— but it's like wishing for rain as i stand in the desert.
.
.
.
.
.
Bacchus doesn't think Cana is a little girl.
She hates him, of course. He's a perverted asshole who can out-drink her, and he left her passed out and topless on the floor the night he met her, and he suggested a threesome involving Mirajane and her younger sister on national television— but that's all just character, isn't it? And she can hardly blame him for that. He was just being funny, after all.
And so what if he's an arrogant prick all the time? If he's powerful enough to give Elfman — Elfman, who trained harder than she'd seen anyone train for three long months — a serious run for his money, surely he has the right to be?
And admittedly, his heavy-lidded appraisal of her when he strolled into their inn left her thinking that he was kind of sexy... in a weird, drunk-all-the-time, disgustingly-lascivious, careless-idiot, heartless-bastard kind of way.
When he glances at her over the top of a shot glass, his eyes aren't kind or understanding in the slightest. And there isn't one gentle thing about him as he challenges her with nothing but a wicked grin to knock back another round.
When she comes to, she sees evidence of the havoc he wreaked on the inn's floor, so she teases Wakaba and Macao that they were taken out by a semi-conscious alcoholic. And she's pleased to note that Macao... Well, he hates Bacchus. That may have something to do with wounded pride, but a girl can dream, so she makes a point to seek the drunkard out.
When his eye catches hers across the crowded room of his own guild's inn, he doesn't hesitate to throw her a suggestive smirk. She bites her lips before crossing her arms challengingly and gesturing to him with her chin to join her, and his gaze doesn't leave her body as he lopes across the room to drag her outside.
When he's got her pressed against the back door of a pub in Crocus, and his hot breath is wafting across her cheek, she concedes that Gildarts would probably hate him, too.
When his teeth graze across her pulse point, she hisses his name and curls her fingers against his chest, her nails grazing his skin gently. "H-How old are you?" she finds herself asking as he pulls on her sleeves to grant him access to her shoulder.
When he snorts with laughter against one of the kiss marks he's left on her and asks if she's a little girl or something, she's intensely surprised to find she's at a loss for words.
When he catches the expression in her widened eyes, his gaze softens fractionally, and an unreadable emotion flashes across his face before it's replaced with another devilish grin.
And when she stutters — yes, she fucking stutters — out an all-too-unconvincing "N-No," he just leans closer to her until their foreheads are touching. His fingers play patterns across her bare waist with the touch of a ghost.
And he whispers against her lips, with a challenge in his hooded eyes, to prove it.
.
.
FIN