We're used to the night; we take more than we're able

Coffee's bitter scent coiled in Zeref's nose. He breathed it in deep, deep, deep before he took a drink. It warmed up his guts and made him feel a shade more human. Like he could possibly deal with his mother sitting across from him.

She looked very presentable in a white button-down shirt and a blazer, a pencil skirt on her hips, nice, reasonable shoes on her feet. Business-like and professional.

"New job?"

"Dispatch," she said.

"When did you start?"

"A couple days ago."

So it would be at least three weeks before she got her first pay.

She touched his cheek gently and he thought he should feel bad for being so cynical. Her fingers smelled like St Ives hand cream and it reminded him of his childhood when she'd brush his hair back from his forehead and tell him how handsome he was. Then she'd make him and Natsu blueberry pancakes. "I don't get to see you anymore. I miss you."

"I miss you, too." He thought. There was a longing in his chest when he looked at her and whether that was because she represented a time in his life when things were simple or because she was his mother and she had a way of making things look like they could have definition and meaning, he wasn't sure.

"You should bring Natsu to the house for dinner."

"Dad doesn't want me there."

"Of course he does."

He didn't. "I make him uncomfortable."

Her fingers moved from his cheek into his hair. "Baby, don't say stuff like that."

The truth. He reached for a feeling he'd seen others wear but couldn't quite emulate in the mirror. He thought it should sort of feel like shame and sadness mixed together. Hurt. Betrayal. "Just tell me how much money you need."

She studied him carefully and Zeref knew he'd gotten his expression wrong. "Have you been taking your medication?"

What was it about mothers? How could they see through your most glamourous bullshit?

"Baby…" she hedged. "You need to take your pills. They're important."

"Just tell me how much money you need."

Her hand fell away; her eyes got hard. The kind of hard they'd been when Zeref's dad told him to get out of the house and she stood by and did nothing. "Our property tax is coming out. And the phone bill is coming due."

"A grand?"

"That should be fine."

He gave her two so she wouldn't call him again so soon.

Zeref's bedroom door opened and Angel looked in. She wore a green tube dress and tall black socks, despite the cold. Behind her was Ultear, who dressed much more reasonably in a pair of black jeans and a loose-fitting black shirt. She looked at Zeref in the same way she always looked at Zeref. Things always went sideways for him when he let her look at him like that. Doctor Raquel would call them co-dependants. Unhealthy. She worshipped him. Made him feel powerful. Made him want to do all manner of things he shouldn't really want to do, not if he was being level and normal.

The way he felt under her watchful eye, though. Fuck. He could burn the fucking world down. He could set himself on fire. He could fuck everything and it wouldn't even matter.

Ultear closed the door while Angel came to the bed. She was just as bad as Ultear, bringing Perks and telling him it was okay to want them. It was okay to stare at his ceiling for days, thinking about chasing a bigger, better high. Binging left him feeling like a scarecrow, but the space in between? When he wasn't a man and he wasn't a husk? He would die for that. Was dying for that.

Angel had a little round glass mirror covered in white lines. She had a glass tube. Once she sat on the bed, one leg crossed beneath her, she put the end in her nose and snorted one line. She handed it to Zeref and though he thought, this is a bad idea, he snorted the other. Ultear draped over his shoulder and snorted the last. Usually, she was his rock. She was fucking crazy, yeah, but she was also always rooted in reality. With Angel there, something was different with her. She felt dangerous and Zeref was fucking addicted to it.

That's a bad way.

Bad, bad, bad.

It made him want to be dangerous, too.

Angel ran her fingers through the side of his hair, just over his ear, like his mother had. Her nails were short and round and dug into his scalp. "What are you thinking about, baby?" The same pet names, too, like they had the same deep-seated history. Maybe they did. She'd been hanging around for two weeks but she had a way of making it feel like it'd been forever. He didn't hate it. Not really. It added to his façade. Normal guys had fucked up girls like Angel breathing life into their bad decisions.

The Perks grabbed hold of him and he laughed. "Crazy fucking shit." Dark. Dark stuff. Stuff he only ever thought about when the sun set.

Angel glowed. Ultear looked like she was an addict staring down a hit of heroin, daring it to fuck with her. She wanted to be fucked with. He touched her leg and she jolted a little like she'd been stung by a bee. She wet her lips nervously.

"What kind of crazy shit?" Angel leaned into him. Her breath smelled like vodka. It wasn't good to mix. Not ever. Angel wasn't the kind of girl that paid attention to stuff like that, though.

"You ever think you're too fucking crazy for this world?" he asked loosely. "You ever just look at everyone around you and think they just don't fucking get it?"

Angel leaned back, arms behind her, chest pushed out. Her dress was riding low and she wasn't in a bra. "I get it."

"She doesn't get it," Ultear contradicted. No one could understand him, she meant. She wanted to, though.

Zeref bet she didn't.

He reached under his mattress and felt the heavy weight of steel. Ultear's eyes got slightly wider. Angel's were still closed; her head was still tilted back.

Zeref knocked out the wheel of the gun and pulled out all of the bullets. He picked one out of the pile again and put it in the chamber. He flicked it back in and sent it spinning, so he had no idea where the bullet ended up. "This is what I think about." He put the snout to his head. He'd spent his entire life making bad decisions, waiting for someone to tell him to stop. Usually, they did. These girls in this room, though?

Ultear's chest rose and fell nervously, her eyes showed too much of the white. But she loved a good game of chicken. A challenge. And what was the biggest challenge but to Fate herself?

Zeref's guts tingled with nerves, all the blood rushed to his head and he felt so, so high. So unbelievably fucking high. He settled the hammer down and pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked.

Ultear's breath sobbed out. Zeref gave her the gun. She lifted her hand to take it but couldn't quite make her shaking fingers wrap around the handgrip.

Angel snatched it away from her and put it against her temple. She pulled the trigger without any hesitation. Zeref jumped when he heard the click. Angel laughed and it sounded as high as he felt.

Ultear glowered at them both, annoyed at being shown up. "This is a fucking stupid game."

"Then don't play." Angel handed the gun back to Zeref. Ultear snatched it out of his hand and pressed it against her temple. Her eyes squeezed so, so tight, and then she pulled the trigger.

Another click.

This is the time, Zeref thought and knew it deep in his bones. When he put that gun to his head and he pulled the trigger, the bullet would be waiting in that chamber and he would be splattered against his bedroom wall, all over Ultear, who sat so close beside him, and Angel. No more pretending. No more apathy. No more anything.

He closed his eyes and thought of serenity.

Natsu shattered it; it was his gift. He came bursting into the apartment and though there was a door between them, Zeref felt like he'd been caught in the most intimate act. He thumbed the hammer back into place and engaged the safety. He put the gun beneath his bed and pulled away from Ultear, Angel. He had an erection he had to tuck into the belt of his pants. Finally, he was ready.

When he came out into the living room, Natsu was shucking off his jacket. "Hey."

"Are you hungry?" Zeref asked.

"Yeah." Natsu was always hungry.

"Sit down. I'll make us something." There was KD in the cupboard.

He went through the motions, putting a pot on the stove, set to high because he was impatient, opening the box and adding the noodles before the water was finished boiling. Then he stood there, feeling his temple, where the gun had pressed in, and wondering why, when he'd never shown anyone that before, he'd shown Angel and Ultear his favourite game of Russian Roulette.

The best times to play were when he was fresh off a seven-day binge, lying in pain on his floor. He pulled the trigger every time and the gun had never gone off. He figured either he was really fucking lucky or God hated him.

He split the KD into four bowls and handed them out to everyone. Then he turned on the TV and watched a reboot of the old Batman while they ate. Angel picked at her bowl. Natsu ended up finishing it, and Zeref's, too, because he felt too high to eat much. Ultear finished her bowl and then slumped on the couch like it'd been great effort.

The Joker was laughing on TV and Angel was climbing into Zeref's lap. There was another Perk in her hand. She pulled down his lip with her middle finger and slid the pill into his mouth with her index. Zeref swallowed it down with a beer on the coffee table. It was cold. Did he get it? He didn't remember.

Angel rubbed her hands over his middle and kept moving her hips and his thoughts kept blanking. He forgot Natsu and Ultear were there until Angel bit him and he hissed and Ultear huffed exaggeratedly. There was no mistaking what she thought of the whole ordeal.

She lit a bong and passed it to Natsu. He smoked and then he began to clean. Zeref saw it all on the periphery. He knew he should get up and help but Angel was pulling on his shirt, getting it over his head and she was pulling up the skirt of her dress, making him touch her through her damp underwear, and his head was a blank mess.

Hours passed like minutes.

Natsu's phone dinged out a One Up sound from Super Mario Bros, bringing Zeref back to reality. His brother was shrugging into his leather jacket.

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

Which only meant one thing. "Law School's back in town?"

"Don't call her that."

There were worse things he could call her, that he wanted to call her. Girls like Law School Lucy didn't understand people like the Dragneels. They didn't have rusting out trucks and mothers begging them for money, they didn't have Perks scattered over their coffee table and bong water smelling up their sink when they cleaned their artillery. They were good girls, and good girls fucked with people like them. They gave them a taste of something really fucking good and then they always, always took it away.

Conveying that seemed like a lot of effort. Zeref only said, "Be careful, Natsu."

"Yeah." The door closed behind him. Ultear locked it and came to Zeref with her shirt off. her bra was midnight blue. She threw it to the couch and got behind Angel. She worked on getting Zeref's pants open. Angel turned and glared at her. "What do you think you're doing?"

Ultear looked like she'd been slapped.

It was tempting to sit back and let the calamity unfold, but that's not what a normal person would do. "Ultear's alright."

Those were the right words for Angel, but the wrong ones for Ultear. She went from looking shocked to looking mad. People were complex. It was a good thing he knew Ultear.

He grabbed her forearm before she could sneak away and put her hand on his cock. He closed eyes, bent his back, used the right sigh. She was his again. This time, Angel didn't complain when Ultear took him out of his pants and sucked him off. She stood, got rid of her clothes, and settled back down again.

"I need to go to the hospital to get more Perks for us."

"Later." Zeref had found a condom in his wallet. He put it on and Ultear guided him into Angel. She was good at sharing. Angel was not. She let Ultear touch her and even seemed to enjoy it, reaching behind herself and grabbing Ultear by the back of the head, pulling her in so she could rim her while she got fucked, but there was a selfishness in Angel that Zeref was sure was going to cause him problems later down the road.

She sulked when he pulled out of her and told Ultear to get on the couch on her knees and told Angel to get beneath her. He thought she liked it, though, when he grabbed her hair and made her lick Ultear's clit while he fucked her.

Zeref made a case study of them, giving Ultear more attention than he gave Angel, then switching, and seeing how they both responded. It wasn't very often he got this close to jealousy.

Zeref's house was full of strangers. It was like that. People came and went all the time. Sometimes, they were looking for something to get them through the night, a pill, some bud, sometimes, they just wanted to sit in the smoke of cigarettes and dope and pretend that they were part of this. What this was, Zeref didn't know. People just liked being around him, he supposed. He didn't know why. They looked at him in fascination or they looked at him in disgust, but they always looked at him.

It made him feel powerful.

Someone put on some Zeppelin and he slouched back into the ratty couch, letting the guitars pick him up and drag him higher and higher and higher until he felt like he was going to fall and burst open like a rotten watermelon. Look at all the poison in your head. Look at it bleed out when you're dead.

"We should go to the hospital now before I'm too fucked up to get the pills," Angel said.

"He can't drive," Ultear responded.

Angel looked directly at Zeref. "Can you?"

Can I?

"You'll get a DUI, Zeref. Don't."

He needed his license.

Angel said, "What about Natsu?"

"What about Natsu?" Ultear asked.

"He can take me."

"To steal drugs from your work?" Ultear snorted and looked at Zeref, expecting him to say no because he didn't fuck around when it came to Natsu. Natsu was the better of them. He wasn't rotten. He could do this. Be normal.

Zeref liked the way Ultear was incredulous and he liked the way Angel looked victorious, though, when he shrugged. It made him laugh his dead laugh and it made Ultear bristle. She crossed her arms and turned her back on Zeref, choosing instead to talk to a girl with pink hair whose name Zeref didn't know.

Natsu came home; Zeref didn't know what time it was. It was dark out. He took in the party stoically.

"There he is," Angel said in a sticky-sweet voice.

Zeref organized his thoughts. "Have you been drinking?"

"Me? No," Natsu said hesitantly. "Why?"

"Because he wants you to drive me to the hospital," Angel said.

Natsu looked her over as if hunting for injury. Of course, he wouldn't find any. "Why?"

"Because I asked." Angel slipped from Zeref's lap and grabbed up her backpack beside the couch. "What do you say, Natsu?"

He was still looking at Zeref, searching for an explanation and part of Zeref, the reasonable Zeref, told himself that this was a bad idea. He was setting his brother up and he shouldn't. It wasn't what a good older brother would do. But then Natsu said, "I guess," and it was suddenly out of his hands.

When Natsu left with Angel, Ultear when with them. Someone asked why and Zeref honestly didn't have an answer, though he tried to think of what Doctor Raquel would say if he asked her what she thought. She might say something about competition and jealousy, or maybe something about them being friends. He would then tell her about the mean glint in Angel's eye as Ultear tongued her and she'd get uncomfortable for a split second before burying that under professionalism.

He considered perhaps he should be a therapist. He would listen to peoples dirties with a smooth expression, thinking things like, are they more fucked up than me? and congratulating himself when he finally found someone he thought was.

Distantly, Zeref heard yelling. He dismissed it at first. People yelled in this part of town all the time.

But then he saw the red and blue pulse of police lights and something told him something was very, very wrong. Suddenly, he knew with certainty that it was Natsu and he felt something sink in his guts. Anger.