Choke this love till the veins start to shiver
When Natsu was young, first he'd squished a butterfly, and then, when he put together cause and effect—its lifeless body with the green goo that came out of its abdomen, the once beautiful wings now crumpled—he cried. His mother had appeared out of the sliding glass door onto the concrete patio at the back of their house with words of wisdom, as she often did when things got teary, these ones so complex that he had difficulty understanding. There were men in monsters and monsters in men, she'd said. To be one, you need not be the other, but it helped. How did a man know he was being a monster if he had not yet been one, and thusly, how did a monster know how to be a man if he had not yet acted like one?
She dried his tears with the kitchen towel she'd taken from her shoulder. It had smelled like baking. Cherry cheesecake. The wind stole that smell from Natsu's nose before he could really enjoy it and plucked his mother's wispy hair from its bun. He still remembered. He still remembered everything. The coarseness of the cotton towel on his cheeks, how the tears she dried seemed to satisfy her, but not him. Never Natsu. Confused, he pushed the envelope. And would always push the envelope, when prodded. After all, how did one know whether he was a monster or a man?
Trouble, the prodder, started not with a T but an A. She found herself on their doorstep after Zeref returned Natsu to the hospital to get his cast off. The series of events that had her cramming into the Dakota? Natsu couldn't say. Zeref went outside to have a cigarette while Natsu used the washroom, and when Natsu came out, she was climbing into the open truck in a skirt so small, Natsu saw the flash of icy blue panties beneath.
Zeref was like that. Solemn, yet he attracted people to him. A magnet.
Natsu's first assessment of his nurse—the hot one, not the two hundred and forty pound one—wasn't incorrect. Her smile was mean and her eyes were cold and blue. She wore her jacket open and when she was not in her scrubs, she had a large tattoo on her chest. A beautiful one with hideous creatures she called angels. She said that was her name, too. Natsu didn't believe her.
Pills were a rare occurrence in the Dragneel household. In Angel's presence, they were commonplace. She was the breeze that gusted life into so many sputtering flames and encouraged a bonfire in the days that followed. Natsu watched Zeref as he tromped down Angel's shadowed road willingly. He watched Ultear, too. She was willing to share and Angel was not and the only time Zeref wanted Ultear was when she was with someone else, too.
It was a time bomb. Ticking away. Threatening to explode.
A week passed and it never did.
Stillness bred complacency.
Sitting beside his brother while late, pale winter sunlight sludged through black sheets meant to be drapes, he watched Angel open Zeref's mouth with a finger topped with a short, blue-painted nail, and pop a pill onto his tongue. Ultear, eyed them, too, and didn't try to hide her scorn. She grabbed a bong off the coffee table littered with lighters and ashtrays and pop bottles and lit it up. Then she offered it to Natsu. He accepted it and when his head was buzzing, he started to clean. By the time Lucy texted him to say she was back in town, he was sober and the apartment looked like a habitable place again, if you ignored the spread of pills on the table, his half-naked brother on the couch and the girl perched on top of him slowly, methodically rocking her hips. Didn't she have to work?
Natsu decided he didn't care.
"Where are you going?" Zeref asked as Natsu shrugged into his jacket.
"Out."
"Law School's back in town?"
"Don't call her that."
Zeref sucked on his tooth. There was a meanness in him. He shaved it back and, like a switch had been flipped, was somber once again, the brother that tied his shoelaces too tight. "Be careful, Natsu."
There was a time when he was young that he would have been flippant with his reply but Zeref's somberness had a way of sneaking into your bones. "Yeah."
Lucy was burdened with a large black and blue book when Natsu picked her up outside of the Paper Star, her favourite café. Natsu took the icebreaker that book offered, though he'd never needed an icebreaker with Lucy before, everything had always been easy with her and asked about it. She'd launched into a forty-minute monologue about her new elective, astronomy. Astronomy. The study of the stars. It was wild to think that people did that.
"I thought you wanted to take law?" They seemed as far apart as any two things could be, one focusing on the struggles of man, the other looking above and beyond this world.
Lucy shrugged and effortlessly said the thing that washed Natsu of the two-week-long turmoil he hadn't even been aware of. "I can be more than one thing."
Everything was easier after that.
It was cold but Natsu bought Lucy a milkshake with the last of the money he made before the factory he'd worked in got closed down the month before. She ordered a burger and fries, too, and scarfed it back like she was starving. In between bites, she talked about her school and asked about how he was doing. He hadn't done much of anything since she'd left, floated in and out of a fog, mostly, wondering about Trouble and Monsters and feeling it all press down on him but not knowing why.
He didn't explain that to her. He did, however, tell her that he was looking for a new job.
"Yeah?" She sounded a little surprised. That stung anew.
"Sure. I've had a couple of interviews." That much was true. Getting a job was harder than he thought, though. He could go in and smile at people, and they seemed to like him, but they looked at his hand in its cast and at the way he moved stiltedly and then they closed down. Things would be different now, though, Natsu decided. With his cast off and his movements getting easier every day, he'd find something.
Lucy looked like she wanted to say something and it was eating at her. Natsu suddenly didn't want to know what she was going to say, positive that it'd sound something like, why the sudden ambition? Or Did my father say something to you to bring this on?
There was a park on the north side of town; it was abandoned so late in the year. Natsu put the truck in four wheel and drove it off the sideroad leading to the park.
"What are you doing?" Lucy squawked.
"What's it look like?"
She gripped the door handle to hold herself in her seat. "This is illegal or something. I'm sure of it."
"So what?"
"So what? We're going to get into trouble."
With a smile reminiscent of one of Zeref's wickedest, Natsu gunned it over a snow-covered lawn, and put the truck right on top of the tallest hill before turning and asking Lucy, "From who?"
"I don't know," Lucy said sheepishly. "The police or something."
Natsu made a grand show of turning around in his seat and hunting the empty horizon. He couldn't even see a street lamp; the evergreens were thick there. "The place is empty and the cops don't come here in the winter. Come on."
There was a blanket in the back seat that Natsu had dug out of a box in his closet and left in the truck for purposes like these. He had it laid out and was already looking at the sky before Lucy deigned to join him, sliding out of the truck and climbing into the back over the tailgate. She nestled into Natsu's side so close, he was able to grab the edges of the blanket and pull it up over her. Her sigh pushed her ribs into his. Natsu made her a pillow out of his bicep and pulled her close.
"Teach me."
Lucy lifted her head and looked at him. "What?"
"What you know about the stars. Teach me."
She settled back down and looked up at the sky again for so long, Natsu thought she wasn't going to say a thing. Really, she was just choosing a place to start. Space was a big place. She began with the light of the stars, how people on earth were actually seeing their glow from long ago because though light-speed was fast, space was vast, and it would take millions of years to get to them. She talked about black holes next, dying and dead stars so dense they folded in on themselves and sucked in everything they could. There was one in the middle of the Milky Way but it would take twenty-seven thousand light-years to get there. Which wasn't the same as twenty-seven thousand years.
It was all very confusing. Inevitably, she lost him. Natsu started watching her talk, her lips move around the words. He felt her voice sliding over his skin. It was chill-inducing.
Lucy's head turned and she met his eyes. "Are you still listening to me?"
"Sort of."
"So I've been talking to myself for all this time?"
Natsu kissed her. It was hard to tell if she was mad or not. She wasn't forthcoming with her kiss, not at first. "What's wrong?"
"Hang on." She adjusted and pulled her phone out of her coat and hit the button on top to turn it off. The screen lit up first before it turned black and Natsu saw that her father had been calling her. And was calling her again.
"He doesn't know you're here?"
"I left him a note," she said vaguely.
Natsu sighed.
"Don't sigh. He was at work and his phone was off," she said, and, "Forget about that."
It was hard to just forget about it. Lucy made a convincing argument, though, unzipping her coat a few inches so Natsu could see what she wore beneath. Not much of anything, a loose-fitting white top that was deeply cut down the front and a thin white bra beneath that the tips of her breasts poked against. He kissed them, and her mouth, and back down again. Lucy pulled herself out of her bra and shirt and spread her legs in invitation. Natsu gave her the attention he hadn't been able to before and when she was a shivering, sobbing mess, he pulled her pants down just enough and bruised his knees on the Dakota's ribbed bed.
Lucy didn't want to be dropped off in front of her house, preferring to walk the rest of the way, but that's where Natsu left her. Her father's expensive black car was in the driveway and it was idling with someone waiting inside. Lucy was tense but she still slid over the seat and kissed Natsu—they'd come this far, hadn't they?
"I'll call you later." The truck door closed behind her.
Natsu watched her walk up the walkway to her three storey home. Her father got out of his car when she was partway there. He locked eyes with Natsu. There was no ranting or raving, which was perhaps the worst. There was only judgement.
Natsu returned home. Zeref hadn't moved much. He hadn't dressed much, either. There were people there again, most Natsu knew, some he didn't. There were no more pills on the table, though there was the evidence of some, fine white powder dusting the dark coffee table.
"There he is," Angel preened from the couch and Natsu had to assume she was talking about him because Zeref and Ultear both looked up and his way. Everyone was glassy-eyed. That was no surprise.
"Have you been drinking?" Zeref asked.
"Me? No," Natsu said hesitantly. "Why?"
"Because he wants you to drive me to the hospital," Angel said.
"Why?" She didn't look hurt and she didn't look sober enough to work. Her hair was tufted and beneath her eyes was smears of dark liner.
"Because I asked." Angel unfolded herself from Zeref's lap and grabbed up her backpack beside the couch. "What do you say, Natsu?"
"I guess." He had no reason not to, really.
Ultear rose as well and beat Angel to the front door. She looked much soberer and grumpier, too.
Natsu didn't quite understand what rivalry they'd weaved. It didn't always show itself, most of the time like just then, they were civil, but it appeared in their hustle to the truck, as if getting there first meant something. Ultear was the first to the passenger's side. She waited for Natsu to open the door and climbed in. He thought that meant Angel would get in the back but she pushed past Natsu to climb into the middle seat and put up the console. Ultear looked sour; her attempt to squeeze Angel out hadn't been successful.
"I'm going to need you to wait for me, too," Angel said as Natsu got the truck going. "I shouldn't be more than thirty minutes, okay?"
"What the hell am I supposed to do for thirty minutes?"
"I don't know, but just make sure that you're waiting for me."
"Lucky you, I'm good company," Ultear said blandly.
"Okay?" Angel prodded.
Natsu exhaled. "I guess."
"Good." Angel elbowed him in the shoulder as she yanked her sweater over her head, stripping to her bra, and replaced it with a scrub shirt, her pants, went too.
Natsu tried not to stare. "What are you doing?"
"What does it look like?" Angel asked, lifting her hips and wriggling into a pair of thin pants. "Getting dressed." She tied the front string in a bow then focused elsewhere, lifting her hair up into a ponytail. It was near perfect, practiced. She pushed into Ultear so she could use the flip down mirror to fix her smudged makeup. She took out her earrings, and removed her necklace, putting both in the cup holder.
Angel turned to Natsu. "How do I look?"
"Like a dumpster nurse stripper," Ultear said drably.
Angel looked back over her shoulder. "So just your type?"
Ultear's lips pressed together. She didn't confirm nor deny. Natsu busied himself with putting the Dakota in a parking space near the front door.
"Thanks." Angel smiled smarmily and climbed over Ultear to exit. Natsu watched her enter the hospital and disappear out of view.
"Thank fucking god." Ultear got comfortable, lunging in the passenger's seat with her leg tucked up beneath her and her back against the window. She played with the string on her hood for a while, watching the parking lot in silence. Natsu played with the radio, stopping on Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. It held his attention for about three minutes, then he turned to his phone, scrolling through all his social media.
Ultear sighed dramatically. Natsu looked up. "Yeah?"
"I'm bored."
"You're the one that chose to come along."
"To save you from that predator."
"Uh huh." He was pretty sure he could have handled Angel.
Ultear drummed her fingers on the dash. "You know what you're doing here, right?"
Annoyed, Natsu put his phone to sleep. "Frankly? No."
"Your brother's new girlfriend hatched some stupid plan."
"Pretty sure Angel isn't his girlfriend." Zeref didn't have girlfriends. He had girls he fucked and that was all.
"Whatever she is. She's forging signatures on prescriptions and filling them."
"Why?"
"Because she can fill them without having to pay for them." Ultear didn't have to say the rest. She did, though. "She's giving them to Zeref to sell off."
Natsu felt a weight bear down on him, a heavy one that made raising his shoulders feel like a chore. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He didn't like it very much. They didn't know Angel. "What's she get out of this?"
"Nothing PG enough for your virgin ears."
He didn't bother responding; he knew Ultear well enough to know she was just trying to get a raise from him.
True to form, she slid a little bit closer. "Doesn't that bother you? That Zeref sent you out here?"
Zeref had done a great many things that required closer inspection, this being not the worst. "No."
"What is it about him, huh?"
"You tell me, Ultear. You're the one that's always coming around."
She harrumphed. "Don't you like to see me?"
"Most of the time, I don't."
"Is that supposed to be some kind of joke? Because it's not funny."
"Either you're in my brother's bed or you're on the couch. I don't spend much time in either place."
Ultear's eyes narrowed. "Is there a crown that comes with that moral high ground, your highness? Because I'd like to polish it for you."
"You're shitty company."
"I'm only as good as the people I'm with," Ultear snarked right back.
Natsu put his head against the window and counted down the seconds until Angel reappeared. It took longer than thirty minutes. So long, in fact, that Natsu thought for sure she'd been caught and started to wriggle in his seat. Ultear was a cool customer always and plucked at her nails, clearing them of the flaking nail polish she'd swiped on days before.
People moved in and out of the hospital doors. Some were patients, some were staff members. Natsu catalogued each one but stopped when his phone buzzed. It was Lucy and she'd sent him a picture that made between his legs tighten up. He was typing out a reply to her when the truck door opened, almost putting Ultear on the ground, and Angel slid in. She didn't try for the middle this time, satisfied to push Ultear over.
"Did you get it?"
"Of course I did," Angel said. "Drive, Get Away."
"Get away?" Natsu asked.
"Better than Patsy."
Natsu started the truck up again and got going. "Aren't you worried you're going to get caught?"
"It's been three years now and I haven't yet," Angel said.
It seemed only a matter of time. For Angel, though, as for with everyone, stillness bred complacency. She opened the pills and took one out, offering it to Ultear more sensually than she did to Zeref, slipping it between her own lips and then pressing it onto Ultear's tongue that way. And Ultear let it happen. Gleeful, the way she took that pill back.
That was a line of fucking crazy that Natsu didn't understand. If asked, he'd swear they hated each other. And yet, their kiss turned into something more. Natsu kept his eyes on the road when seatbelt-less Ultear was pulled onto Angel's lap and turned up the music to block out the high-pitched sigh Ultear made.
The apartment came out of the dark and Natsu was glad. He pulled the truck down the laneway beside the movie store, saying loudly, "We're back."
Ultear sat straight and shook back her hair. Angel still touched her, more idly now, though. Natsu still found something else to look at. Like the fence that lined the one side of the laneway that was tall and naturally stained. It reminded him of the one that had been in his backyard once. He'd found a baby bird cramped up beneath one of the boards. He and Zeref had nursed it back to health until their mother got home from work; she'd taken it to an animal shelter where Natsu was told it would be made better.
There was no bird waiting beneath these boards. There was a group of guys leaning against them, though. Natsu eyed them warily and parked closer to the apartment then he would normally.
"Friends of yours?" Ultear asked when she caught him looking their way.
"No." Natsu turned off the truck. Nothing had happened yet but he could feel the adrenaline making his senses heighten. Ultear and Angel climbed out the passenger's side together, Natsu the driver's side. He was painfully aware of the doors creaking open and closed, and of the snow crunching beneath his boots. The two girls ahead of him, seemingly a united force in this single moment, walking shoulder-to-shoulder.
"Hey," one of the guys called behind them.
Natsu slowed because he knew that voice. At one time, it had called him a faggot.
"Hey."
He listened to it again to be sure, and to the boots crunching up behind him.
"Hey, wait."
Natsu stopped and turned. Only one of the men had broken away from the group, not particularly tall or broad but wiry. The other two lingered by the fence still.
"Got a light?" The man held up his cigarette.
Natsu acted without much thought and punched him, suckered him right in the nose. And he kept going, grabbing him by the collar and wrestling him to the ground. The guy's friends joined, one kicking Natsu in the back, the other getting Natsu in the back of his head. It made black stars dance before his eyes. Someone yelled. The pummeling from elsewhere stopped. Natsu's vision cleared and he saw a slick of black hair. Ultear. There was something in her hand. Metal and long. She'd grabbed a crowbar out of the back of the Dakota and was hitting one of the men with it mercilessly; there was another on the ground, unmoving. She wasn't shy of the blood that flew across the snow. The only thing that made her wary was the strobing red and blue lights that brought it into relief, flashing again and again.
A/N: I disgust myself like I knew I would. I'm going to need more than six chapters. Ten. I'll shoot for ten.
