I wanna love you but I want it too much.
Five-year-old Natsu caught a bad case of chicken pox from one of his classmates. The red lumps were everywhere. His nose, his neck, armpits, all over his back and his leg, even between his fingers and his toes. He scratched until they bled and then he cried. His mother had taped oven mitts on his hands to keep him from itching. It worked. It didn't make him feel better, though.
Zeref had already had chicken pox once so he couldn't catch it again but in an effort to make Natsu feel better, he found a red sharpie and drew all over his body using a mirror while their mother was at work. Natsu didn't know at the time that the marks were fake and hadn't found out until years later, and Zeref's plan worked. There was comfort in knowing that he wasn't suffering alone. After that, up until about the time Natsu was thirteen, anytime Natsu got hurt, Zeref did, too. Cuts, bruises, broken fingers. It didn't matter. They were a united force.
Natsu was thrown back into those days when Zeref walked into the hospital room with a busted up nose. His first thought, however horrible, was good. I'm not the only one. It faded for concern. "What happened?"
Zeref touched the tape holding his nose in place very, very gently. "Nothing. How're your ribs?" Every word came out nasally.
"Fine. Did you do that to yourself?" Zeref had spent time in therapy for his little tick, their mother insisted. It'd been a long time since he'd had a relapse.
"No." His answer was short and concise, leaving Natsu to believe he was being truthful.
"Then someone did it to you? Was it the same people that got me? Why? Did you see who they were?"
Zeref pushed Natsu's shoulder, forcing him down onto the bed again when he tried to rise. "It's fine. Everything's fine."
"Then why the broken nose?"
Zeref parted with the canvas backpack he'd been carting and dropped his weight on the bed. Natsu was jostled and reminded that he had a bruised rib. Under all the morphine it panged dully. "I was just asking questions, alright? Probably in places I should have been asking them."
"What's that mean?"
Zeref looked at Natsu and accepted the stubborn look he wore. "It means Ultear saw some guy at Fairy Tail bragging about a wallet he stole, she texted me, and—" He lifted his hand to his face like it was self-explanatory.
"Does he look worse at least?"
Zeref shrugged noncommittally. Natsu was too distracted to be suspicious of his brother's taciturn nature; Zeref was usually keeping secrets.
"Was it the guy?"
"No. The wallet belonged to some scrawny kid."
Natsu dropped his head back to the hard block that the hospital called a pillow. "This is shit. If Gildarts hadn't shown up—"
"You would have kept fighting like an idiot and you'd probably be looking worse right now," Zeref said. "Or you'd be dead. Or you would have done something you can't come back from. Now drop it."
"But—"
"Drop it." He changed topics almost too quickly for Natsu to follow. "I talked to your doctor. She said if I can get you out of here, I can take you home. Nothing's broken and you don't have a concussion. Your twelve hours of observation are up."
That was the kind of thing that distracted Natsu from his warpath. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. You just got to come back for a checkup in a couple of days. Get this looked at." Zeref tapped Natsu's bandaged hand, fractured from one of the times he punched his attackers.
"Sounds fucking eh to me."
Zeref went to a little vinyl-sided cubby across the room. Inside, Natsu saw someone, likely his nurse, had put his clothing in a bag. The only thing Zeref took out of it was Natsu's jacket. He threw it on the bottom of the bed and then went sorting through the backpack. He'd brought Natsu his favourite Led Zeppelin T-shirt, so old it was torn in spots and a pair of faded blue jeans.
With the clothes laid out, Zeref outstretched his hand. "Come on, I'll help you get dressed."
Natsu let himself get pulled into a sitting position. It hurt bad enough he felt nauseated afterwards and had to stay exactly as he was for a moment to catch his breath.
"Alright?" Zeref asked.
"Yeah."
"They gave me a prescription for you." Zeref took a bottle of pills from his pocket and rattled them. "If you need one, let me know."
"Mmhm. I'm good."
Zeref worked efficiently, untying the back of Natsu's hospital gown, pausing only to glower at the bruise Natsu's middle had become. Purple reached from his hip to his pectoral and from his belly button around his back almost to his spine.
Natsu tried to distract his brother from his building rage. "Isn't a hot nurse supposed to do this?"
"Your hot nurse is a two hundred and forty-pound dude that looks like he could pick you up and fold you in two. Unless you're into that, I'm the best you've got."
"That's not what she looked like last night." Last night she'd had a sour disposition but she'd been pretty enough, hair so blonde it was white, eyes a little mean but blue.
"No, it is not. Shift change." Zeref stretched the neck hole of Natsu's shirt and pulled it over his head. Natsu felt like he was small again. Zeref had done this for him more than once back then, and a few times into his adult life, too, though usually for different reasons. Too many beers or too much something else. Stupid shit.
"You're putting on your own pants," Zeref said.
Natsu wanted to crack a joke but his head felt empty and fuzzy on morphine. "Uh huh."
Zeref laid the pants out for him to step into and held his elbow for balance. Natsu couldn't bend over to pull them on, though, and Zeref took pity on him and pulled them up.
"You owe me."
"Yeah. Help me get my shoes on?"
Zeref knelt and worked with that eerie patience he was so capable of, shoving Natsu's foot into the leather work boot and then tying up the laces. He yanked them too tightly; some things never changed.
When he was ready, Zeref led the way out of the hospital room, moving much slower than usual so Natsu could keep up. People got out of their way and not many stared, preoccupied with their own reasons for visiting the hospital. At the reception desk, Natsu stood with his back against a large cylindrical pillar while Zeref spoke with the nurse behind the counter.
"Come on," Zeref said when he returned a moment later and brought Natsu into the parking lot. In true Zeref fashion, he'd left Natsu's truck parked by the front doors despite the No Parking sign.
"Thanks for getting it."
Zeref pulled open the passenger's door and a sharp chemically smell wafted out. "Don't mention it. Ever, seriously. You left a dirty fucking condom on the floor. It was gross."
"'Least I used one?" Natsu tried.
Zeref didn't crack a smile. "You owe me for a pack of latex gloves and a can of Lysol."
That's what the smell was.
"And more. I haven't yet decided the monetary value of dealing with your hysterical girlfriend."
"What do you mean?"
"Lucy's been calling your phone nonstop. I only made the mistake of answering once." Zeref closed the door. Natsu sighed and put his head against the cool window.
The old movie store had been home for only a few months. When it closed to the public, the owner, one of Zeref's many eccentric friends, left the posters up and even the movie stands. The movies were sold, though Zeref had taken a couple of them for him and Natsu, and they moved in as soon as Zeref started paying rent.
There were no neighbours to bother, and the only concession the owner made was that the black curtains in the windows remained closed so that if anyone from the city came by, they couldn't see that a place not registered as commercial/residential was being used as such.
The apartment had everything Natsu thought it could need. There was a kitchen of sorts, with a sink. They'd squeezed a mini fridge inside the narrow space and an oven beside it, an old one with fuses in the top that Zeref had scrounged out of a dump a few years ago. They'd cleaned it, given it a new fuse, and the rest was history. There was a washroom—tiny, painted white and unwashed of the graffiti it'd accumulated in its previous life. Natsu liked it, though. It was something no one else had.
His bedroom, like Zeref's down the hall, was only large enough for a single mattress. He'd put red Christmas lights up around the ceiling and hung speakers in every corner and plastered his walls with band posters. It felt more like home than any other place he'd lived, despite the endless stream of Zeref's friends coming in and out of the apartment, filling their two threadbare couches, clouding the air with cigarette and marijuana smoke.
It wasn't one of Zeref's friends sitting out front when Zeref pulled the Dakota into the laneway that would lead into the parking lot around the back, it was Lucy. Her hair was still curled from last night, though limp now. Snowflakes had landed in those gold strands and melted. And like last night, her cheeks were red with cold.
She looked up when she heard the truck approaching and, upon identifying it, sat up straight and rubbed her mitted fingers beneath her nose.
Zeref stopped the truck in the middle of the laneway and handed Natsu his keys. "You get out here, I'll go park it."
"Thanks." Natsu took the keys from his brother and got out of the truck, moving disjointedly. Lucy was there before both feet were on the ground, wrapping her arms around his middle and pushing against him.
"Are you okay?"
He pushed her back just a little so she wasn't squishing him quite so much and so he could close the truck door. Zeref pulled away quickly, not even attempting to hide his annoyance with Lucy. She really must have been calling nonstop. That wasn't surprising, she worried about everything. Natsu said, "I'm alright."
"I tried coming to see you," she said, "But Zeref said you were drugged up and getting x-rays and my dad wouldn't drive me. I'm so angry with him right now. If he hadn't made me go with him, I could have walked home with you and this probably wouldn't have happened and—"
"It's okay."
She scowled. "It's not. I've been calling Gildarts and he says he as no leads, you know? He's looking into the truck and that's it."
"They were wearing masks," Natsu said. "And I didn't recognize anyone's voice."
"I think he should be roughing up people in the streets or something," Lucy grumbled.
Zeref, with his broken nose and undamaged hands, came around the corner and opened the door. He left it that way even after entering and his meaning was clear enough. Natsu followed him inside with Lucy's help.
Morphine wore off slowly and when it did, Natsu, on Zeref's suggestion, tried to steer clear of the opioids if he could avoid it. People got addicted to those for less things than a bruised rib, fucked up their lives and ended up begging in the gutters. He smoked the joint Zeref came into his room to give him, feeling guilty under Lucy's watchful eye, but Zeref wouldn't take no for an answer. Zeref only left when it was completely done.
Natsu asked Lucy to turn off his overhead light and press Play on his phone, shuffling through his music. She obliged and then came back to his bed to the tune of Alice Cooper's Poison. Maybe it was the pot that made it seem like she drifted along or maybe that was just Lucy's natural grace. Whatever the case, she climbed onto his bed and put her head on his bicep and her leg between his.
"Is this okay?"
"It's good."
She put her fingers in his hair and brushed it back from his ear. "And that?"
"Feels really, really nice."
"It's 'cause you're high." She said it nonchalantly like she didn't care, though Natsu knew the truth, it made her uncomfortable. The pills would have been better, if only for the way they were obtained, legally at a doctor's behest.
"Sorry."
"You don't have to apologize."
That only made Natsu feel like he should do it more.
Lucy's lips brushed Natsu's cheekbone, distracting him. Her voice dripped like honey. "Does it hurt still?"
"Not a lot."
"Then that's good." She put another kiss on his cheekbone and one on the corner of his mouth. Natsu stole a full kiss before she could move on. She tasted sweet, her tongue was wet. He tasted bitter, his own mouth dry. There was that great divide again, a gaping hole between them that they reached across sometimes but could never step over.
The thought ran through his head like water runs through sand, there in an instant and gone in a flash as Lucy's kiss deepened along with her breathing. Her fingers tightened on the hem of his shirt and Natsu felt himself falling down a long, dark hole that went on seemingly forever. He focused only on the movement of her chapped lips and the taste of the bubble gum she'd chewed earlier so he didn't get caught up in the blackness. Lucy helped in giving him a physical bond to this world, taking his hand and putting it on her body. It took Natsu a little while to figure out what to do but then he followed her ribs to the swell of her breast. She felt nice, soft yet firm. She sighed. Natsu found something else to focus on and thought it would be that forever.
Lucy changed his perception by kissing his neck. It was startling, the sudden change. Down. Down. She was sliding away. "Where are you going?"
Lucy shushed him. "Just relax."
Her suggestion was like a command; Natsu had to put his head back on his pillow. Closing his eyes cut him off from the world in a way he wasn't really prepared for. without sight, there was only auditory and physical sensation. He listened to Lucy's puffing breaths, he felt her fingers undo the button of his pants, he listened to his zipper come undone, he felt her cool hands wrap around his cock. He listened to her mouth come open and fell down another deep, dark hole, at the bottom of which was the best blowjob he could ever recall having.
"I don't think you can ever stop." Hearing his own voice was startling.
Lucy laughed. "I'll have to, eventually."
Natsu touched the back of her head and pulled her in close again. Her tongue cupped him from the base to the tip and back down. He was falling again when she disappeared. Something sweet-smelling landed beside his head. Another thing, too, this one had ropes or something to get tangled in his fingers. Natsu opened his eyes. Lucy's bra. Lucy's bra was in his fingers.
Weight shifted on the bed and then settled down around his hips. Natsu found Lucy. The red lights bounced off her hair and her skin and made her look ethereal. She was completely naked. He was almost completely clothed. Another contrast.
"Am I hurting you?"
He felt her weight on his bruised side and his rib hurt when she shifted. "No."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
Natsu heard his bedside drawer open and close, plastic rustling. Lucy rolled a condom on and followed on its tail, lifting her hips and taking him inside. Natsu held her legs loosely, one hand feeling everything, the other nothing but cast. All of that faded into the background for the sweet slide of Lucy's body and the sharp knock to his ribs, though she tried to be gentle.
Between his lashes, Natsu watched Lucy arch back, cast in that red light. Her breasts, large and heavy, were upheld by the arm she wrapped around her middle, and she spread between her legs with two fingers. She multitasked without faltering, lifting her hips and bringing them down, swirling over her clit and bringing herself to an orgasm skillfully. Like with everything he chose to focus on, Natsu felt that in hypersensitivity. Her body clenched around his faster than he could keep up with and he was suddenly wet. She kept going through her orgasm, which is what brought him into his own.
Lucy slowed and stopped and leaned forward to gift him a kiss. She was gone. He felt her get her bra and her shirt and turned to watch her get into her jeans. She said without meeting his eyes, "I go back to Clover today."
Her words settled around him. "You do?"
"Christmas break is over and school starts again on Monday."
"Yeah, but it's Saturday." Wasn't it?
"Yeah, but my dad doesn't want to drive me back on Sunday, he has to work Monday morning and it's a big case." Lucy handed him a Kleenex off the nightstand and he cleaned himself up, getting as far as reaching over his head and throwing the condom and the Kleenex into the garbage, and then he was in so much pain that he had to breathe shallowly.
Lucy recognized his stillness for what it was. "I knew we shouldn't have done that. I don't know why I listened to you."
Natsu ignored her. "When do you come back?"
"I don't know. In a couple of weeks?"
There had been music other than Natsu's blaring in the apartment. It abruptly cut out. Voices came to Natsu's ears. Hushed. There were people over. He hadn't realized, though he wasn't surprised. There was always someone over.
Natsu picked Zeref's voice out over the din saying, "Yeah, she's here."
He knew even before his brother knocked on the door that there was someone here for Lucy. Lucy, too, seemed to know, she looked distraught. "I think I just heard my uncle."
"Your uncle?"
"Yes," she hissed.
"Why would he be here?"
"Because I left my house without telling anyone where I was going and I left my phone at home," she said. "My dad's probably got an armada out looking for me."
"Lucy."
She wouldn't meet his eyes. "I wanted to come see you."
"And your dad didn't want you to."
"So what?" Though she fumbled for her jacket, hurrying to get it on. Natsu got himself upright through a lot of rigmarole and even managed to answer his door when it was knocked on. Zeref waited on the other side and he didn't look happy. The air behind him was clouded with thick, rich smelling smoke. He looked past Natsu for Lucy and confirmed what Lucy already knew.
"Your uncle is here."
Lucy brushed past him and hurried into the main apartment. Natsu followed, slower.
Lucy's uncle said nothing but commanded all of the attention in the room, standing in the front doorway. Acnologia made an impressive visage, there in his black woolen pea coat, hands clutched together in front of his waist. Everything about him was well put-together, dark hair meticulously brushed back and gathered in a low horsetail, pants creased as if he walked out of a magazine ad. Natsu bet beneath the coat, he wore a suit jacket and tie, that's what kind of man he was. And just then, he was standing in a cloud of marijuana, burning a hole through Lucy with a look that came to him effortlessly.
Lucy didn't even say anything. She slipped on her winter boots and pushed open the commercial glass door, braving the winter world. The door closed again. Acnologia locked eyes with Natsu before he followed her and he didn't need to speak for his thoughts to be clear. Lucy didn't belong in this place. The worst part was, Natsu couldn't say that he was wrong. She came from a family of lawyers and—well, he couldn't remember what it was that Acnologia did, but whatever it was, he didn't stand in clouds of cheap marijuana to do it.
A gust of cold air rushed into the apartment and Acnologia was gone. Zeref appeared at Natsu's elbow. Natsu expected a scolding—what if Lucy's uncle sent the cops their way? There were enough paraphernalia and illegal substances to get everyone in the apartment some time behind bars—but one never came. Zeref told Ultear, who was in the midst of a joke at Natsu's expense, to shut her mouth, and he told Natsu to sit down, putting him between Zeref and a girl Natsu didn't know, one with pink hair and a sunny laugh. The music came back on, bowls lighted up again. Someone ordered pizza. Natsu had a slice. Then he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the couch and let the room whirl around him, life whirl on around him.
It wound down. Nothing lasted forever. The apartment was almost empty when Zeref, gentler than Natsu expected, looked at him and delivered the scolding Natsu had been waiting for. "She'll always be Law School Lucy."
Zeref got up and took Meredy by the hand. She was linked with Ultear. Zeref tossed Natsu a quilt off one of the chairs, turned off the light, and then the three disappeared down the narrow hallway. Natsu remained where he was long after moans filled the air. He watched the reflection of the blue lights of snow ploughs going by outside and let that sting sink in.
She was always going to be Law School Lucy. He didn't know who he was.
A/N: Wordslinger made Acnologia Jellal's father and Lucy's uncle in The Fall of Mercutio and I shamelessly love the dynamic. I cannot be stopped.
On my other profile, SleeplessComplication, I wrote a jerza one-shot in this universe, in case anyone is interested. Otherwise. Thanks for reading.
