all ears, all scars

note: very late, but ultimately inspired by 2022 fairy tail rarepair week's day 6 prompt: moonlight/stars. title from the patron saint of liars and fakes by fall out boy.

and in case someone opened this fic and doesn't know what comphet is, comphet = compulsory heterosexuality, or the theory that heterosexuality is assumed and enforced amongst people in patriarchal and heterosexual societies. comphet is something many queer people struggle with and is not limited only to people who are homosexual, although – strictly in my first and secondhand experience – bisexual/pansexual people experience comphet slightly differently.

…

Cana was no stranger to late nights. After all, Magnolia was a beautiful town with decent midnight amusements, yet light pollution was not so bad that she couldn't see the major constellations. And when her head craned up with that blissful wobble in her step? She knew the night was good.

One person, who she was pretty sure did not enjoy the late nights (or at least, the late nights Cana practiced), was a certain celestial spirit mage. While one might think Lucy Heartfilia would find midnight her finest time, Cana could count on one hand the times she had seen Lucy up past then. So the sight of Lucy sitting on a bench outside of a club at one in the morning was surprising. Naturally, Cana had to say hello at least.

"Lucy!" Cana said, louder than she meant to. But oh well – it was late.

Upon closer inspection, while pink cheeks betrayed the blonde's tipsiness, Lucy was not a sorry sight nor a sad sight. Lucy did seem a bit more withdrawn than usual though. Still, she smiled at Cana.

"Fancy seeing you here." Cana wiggled her eyebrows and threw her arm around Lucy's freckle-covered shoulders.

"Not my usual scene, I know."

"You could say that again. Why you out tonight?"

"Oh, you know. Just lonely, I guess."

Cana gasped in fake-shock. "Miss Heartfilia! Did you want –" She dropped her voice into a whisper. "-a hookup?"

"Don't say it like that!"

Cana laughed. Lucy was funny (and pretty) when embarrassed. "Relax, I'm just teasing. Hook-ups are part of the fun of being young, you know?"

"If only I could find a person I actually liked," Lucy grumbled. "Every single time I go to one of these things and I find a guy who is moderately good-looking, when we finally get to the point where we're kissing, it just feels… off. Like, I get bored or there's no longer a spark and suddenly, I'm aware of his tongue in my mouth and how sweaty his hands are and the fact that I'm against a wall where a bunch of other people have done the exact same thing and I don't want to do it anymore.

"But I know," she continued. "That spark exists. Why would romance novels make a big deal out of something if it's fake? And like, I don't know." Her voice lowered, so only Cana could hear. "Sometimes I think I feel something like that for people in our guild.

"Like Erza? Erza's incredible. The first time I saw her use her Requip magic, my stomach filled with butterflies and I thought that was normal because, you know, it's Erza. But then Juvia and I completed a Unison Raid and afterwards, when both of us fell onto the ground at the end of the fight, I remember feeling stuck on how her hands and her magic had felt around me. It was my first time ever completing magic like that and nobody had ever described how a Unison Raid felt before, so maybe that breathless feeling was normal? And I would say it's just that – Erza being Erza and a Unison Raid being a Unison Raid, but Yukino… She came to give me her keys and she kneeled and bowed in front of me and Natsu and I couldn't even take my eyes off the skin of her shoulder blades and I just… yeah."

Cana sat, silent and frozen. Lucy had dropped a bomb on her. She had drank too much to handle what sounded like the beginnings of a sexuality crisis.

"You really are a writer, huh?" Cana said. "Even your rants are poetic."

Lucy sighed and muttered a "nevermind," shifting to grab her wallet. Before Lucy could, however, despite her better judgement, Cana added: "Have you ever thought about kissing girls?"

It was Lucy's turn to freeze. "It's not like I don't like men. Gray's hot. I think we've flirted before."

"No need to get defensive."

"I didn't mean it like that." Lucy settled back onto the bench, fiddling with the zipper on her wallet. "I guess I never thought about it too hard. My dad always said I'd marry a man and all the romance novels I read were about a man and a woman.

"I know gay people exist. You and Mira have talked about your crushes before and the butler used to tease the two maids about their crushes on each other. But I wasn't around a lot of young people. I was mostly just happy when anyone would talk to me."

Lucy turned to Cana. Her hand rested on Cana's thigh. "You've kissed girls. Would you be willing to kiss me?"

Cana laughed to hide her surprise. "Okay, you're drunker than I thought!"

Lucy pouted. "So, no?"

Cana didn't know what to say. She never thought she'd be in the situation where she was the one trying to stop someone from making a dumb decision. It's not like she wouldn't be willing to kiss Lucy. Cana had always thought Lucy was drop-dead gorgeous. But, she'd also been in situations like this before and knew that kissing her would be more trouble than it was worth.

She sighed and pulled Lucy up. "Let's just get you home."

They walked a couple blocks towards Lucy's place, the stars winking at Cana like they were in on a secret only she didn't know.

"I'm not drunk," Lucy eventually said. "And you know that."

"Coulda fooled me."

"Why won't you kiss me?"

So, Lucy wasn't going to drop it.

"Look," Cana said. "I think you're pretty. And I've never hidden that thought. And yes, I like girls. But whenever a girl wants to see what kissing another girl is like, they always come to me. A girl at the orphanage I stayed at did that to me, Bisca did that to me, Kinana did that recently – hell, even Levy did that to me."

"Levy?!"

"We were sixteen. My point is that I am always the experiment, but not someone people are willing to stay for. Once they've had their makeout session or two, they leave me. They decide they're actually into men, which is fine. I like men, too! But sometimes they decide they do want a girl, just not me. I don't enjoy being kissed and left."

They were back at Lucy's apartment building, standing outside the wooden door and red walls. Cana could look at Lucy better now. Her arms, crossed over her stomach, fiddled with the hem of her tubetop. Her fiddling pushed the shirt down to reveal her cleavage, which Cana fought valiantly to ignore. Lucy's hair had fallen out of its ponytail sometime during their walk and so it now fell fully in her face. Pink still dusted her cheeks, but under the lamplight of the street and building, her freckles like the constellations above, Lucy was cast golden. It was a pity, that what she was asking for would hurt Cana.

"What I don't understand," Lucy said slowly, as if weighing her words more carefully than she had that entire night. "Is why you won't kiss me, but you were so intimate with me at the bathhouse."

"Lu, if I made you uncomfortable, I'm sorry."

"That's not –" Lucy sighed. "Okay, actually, I was really confused and yeah, it's a bit weird that you brought Natsu into it, when it really isn't like that between us. But that doesn't necessarily mean I didn't like how you hugged me or how your hands felt."

Cana raised her eyebrows. She remembered how Lucy's skin had felt under her fingertips, how the planes of her stomach had curved both soft and strong like a bowstring.

"Am I part of the reason why you're thinking about–" Cana waved her hand. "-women?"

"Maybe. What would you do if I said yes?"

"I'd kiss you."

"You're why I'm thinking about this so much."

All that rarely-shown caution, thrown out the window with just one sentence. But who was she to rely on caution anyway? She didn't have the stars looking out for her like Lucy did. And while her cards could've warned her, would she have listened? She had never listened before, not with Macao or Bisca or Levy or anyone.

So under Magnolia's blissful stars, after a characteristic late night, Cana kissed the guild's starlit princess.

…

note: ik cana is canonically a flirt, but even flirts have issues with being pretty girls' "experiment." like, considering the issues she has with her dad, i would be more surprised if her "not good enough" issues DIDN'T extend to her love life. but also, sometimes you have a crush and think someone's pretty and that overrides both your issues and your better judgment.

also, i rewrote that scene in the bathhouse a little bit, so that cana just hugged her stomach and teased her about natsu, not the whole thing with her boobs. i frankly despise how much sexual harrassment lucy undergoes in the manga so i will simply write it out of my technically in-canon fanfic 3 i acknowledge the canon and yet, i will simply ignore it.

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