All our love's flying in the sand


Blueberry pancakes were Natsu's favourite. Slathered in butter and syrup and stacked five high. Between the ages of eleven and fifteen, Zeref would make them for him every Saturday morning. The day that stopped stood out vividly in Natsu's mind. It had begun innocently enough, breakfast, Zeref took him to the mall and then to the movies.

When they got home, that's when things got bad.

Natsu remembered that the sun was sinking below the horizon and there was a spring storm on the way and it was moving quickly. Zeref parked their mother's car, a modest blue Corolla, and then checked the mailbox because the tag was up and had been for two days. He came out with a stack of white envelopes and flipped through them there in the driveway, and as he did, Natsu watched his face get dark.

"What is it?" Natsu had asked and Zeref hadn't replied, dropping all the mail on the ground except for the last envelope, that he scrunched up and brought with him. Natsu remembered the storm front grabbing the loose envelopes and scattering them up the driveway. He remembered being scared. He remembered how that fear spiked when Zeref went into the house, screaming. He even remembered the way Zeref's voice cracked, he was trying to be so loud, when he said,

"You told mom you paid it."

Whatever his father's response had been was inconsequential. Or if it wasn't, it was washed up in the memory of Zeref's fury. Natsu had heard something break. Zeref swore. Their father mimicked him. And then Zeref was pushed outside, back on the porch again.

Zeref glanced at the loppers left on the deck and everything played out in Natsu's mind like he could see into the future. The things he didn't remember were running up the driveway and grabbing Zeref's wrist to stop him from picking up the sharp tool. He didn't remember their father coming out and hitting Zeref again for even considering it. He didn't remember their soft-spoken mother picking up the phone and calling the police.

He remembered Gildarts, though, showing up and threatening to put Natsu's belligerent father in the back of the cruiser. He remembered the poisoned silence that filled the house afterwards when Gildarts had left. Occasionally, that silence was split by venomous words that had Natsu clutching his hands to his ears and pinching his eyes closed, hoping that it would stop.

In between the puncturing hostilities, Natsu recalled his mother lifting the telephone and calling Zeref. She asked where he was. She asked him to come home. Begged, really. She was scared. Not for herself, but for her son.

Like he'd been waiting for a spark to ignite the flame, Natsu heard his father stomp down the stairs. The phone was forcibly hung up and the screaming started again, as vicious as it had been before. Natsu called the police. Gildarts came back to the house and this time with a restraining order.

"What are you thinking about?"

Natsu looked up from the couch at a much older Zeref leaning out of the small, makeshift kitchen. The truth came out; he hadn't the skill to lie. "The last time you made me blueberry pancakes."

Zeref's jaw flexed. He was careful to steer clear of the turmoil, though. "They're your favourite."

"Yeah."

Zeref ducked back into the kitchen. Natsu listened to him shake the pan back and forth over the stove, butter hissing on hot metal, utensils clanging as they were dropped in the sink. The fridge opening and closing. Zeref returned, this time bearing two plates. Natsu's was stacked five high, just like it used to be, Zeref had two, and he didn't eat them immediately, he watched Natsu cut his pancakes and take a bite while wearing a complex expression.

"What?" Natsu asked when he swallowed.

Zeref said, "I fucked up. I asked you to take Angel to the hospital and I knew what she was doing. I wasn't thinking straight, though. If I hadn't…"

"Those guys still would have been waiting," Natsu said.

Zeref shook his head. "I can handle trash like that. What I don't like is fucking Jude Heartfilia threatening you with a drug charge. What I don't like is you getting involved. It wasn't supposed to happen." Zeref clasped his fists together and rested his chin on his knuckles. Gathering fortification. Natsu prepared himself for whatever was coming and still almost spat his pancakes out. "I've been thinking. Maybe you should call Mom."

"Why the hell would I call Mom?"

"Ask her if you can move back home. Get out of here for a little bit. Let things cool down."

"Is Dad still there?"

Zeref looked away. "I think so."

"Then no."

"Natsu—"

Natsu spoke over his brother. "Are you kicking me out?"

"No."

"Then drop it." His life was already in enough chaos; he didn't need to start thinking about a new place to live on top of it. Especially that place.

Zeref rubbed his palms on his jeans, another old tick whenever he had ideas he was unsure of or didn't much like. "If you're going to stay here then I'll try to go legit."

Natsu glanced at him. "Legit?"

"I'll try to get a job. A good one. Get this shit out of the house." He picked up a stray pipe Natsu didn't recognize and dropped it back to the beaten up coffee table. It clunked loudly. "I don't want to give anyone any reason to come down on you. Not for this."

Natsu supposed that was a peculiar reason to love his brother more but he did just then. For a brief moment. Zeref ruined it, asking "What are you going to do?"

"About what?"

"I know Mister Heartfilia told you to stop seeing Lucy."

"And how the fuck would you know that?"

"Because I asked him what it was going to take to get this charge put away."

"And he told you?"

"Seemed kind of proud to, actually," Zeref said.

Natsu glowered.

"Natsu." Zeref waited until he had Natsu's full attention. "Don't think you can go behind his back and keep seeing her. It's all or nothing for guys like him. Either you tell him to fuck his hat and get slapped with this charge or you do what he says."

Natsu felt like screaming. He asked, "What do you think I should do?"

"I want you to go to school. I want you to get a good job. I want you to have a house. A good one, that you buy legally."

And Zeref wanted to try to get a real job. "So you think I should cut ties with her."

"Yeah," Zeref said. "I do."

"Because she'll always be Law School Lucy."

"Yeah."

Natsu stood, leaving his pancakes on the table virtually untouched.

Zeref asked, "Where are you going?"

"Out."

Natsu expected more of a fight but Zeref let him get his coat and the truck keys.


His phone had lit up with Lucy's number so many times that Natsu eventually turned it off and threw it in the cab of the truck through the quarter window in the rear. It ended up somewhere on the floor and, as far as he was concerned that's where it could stay.

Cold bit at his nose and sore knuckles. He locked his hands behind his head, creating a knobby pillow for himself on the equally knobby truck bed. Sparse clouds crawled by, blocking out the stars and revealing them again a second later. They were bright out there.

Footsteps crunched through the snow, slow and steady. Natsu closed his eyes, listening to them, hoping and also fearing. His heart leapt when her voice came to his ears.

"You can see Canis Major really well tonight."

He kept his eyes closed. "Did you walk here?"

"I tried your apartment first."

"Did Zeref say anything to you?"

"Not really, just that you weren't there."

His brother the stoic.

The truck's suspension squealed quietly when Lucy stepped on the bumper and then over the tailgate. "I've been calling you."

He told his first lie to her. "My phone died."

"Oh." She stepped on to the blanket and got down to his side. "I heard you got arrested."

"Yeah."

"Are you okay?"

Natsu opened his eyes and turned his head. Lucy's hair was loose around her shoulders tonight and her face was clear of all makeup. The only thing she wore was a shine of gloss on her mouth. His heart lurched. "I'm alright."

"My dad said it was pretty serious."

"Sounds like."

Lucy put her palm on his cheek and fixed some tufts of Natsu's unruly hair. "What's going to happen?"

Zeref was ringing in his head, telling him it had to be all or nothing. He was right but more than anything, Natsu wanted both. Freedom and Lucy. "The charges were dropped."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Her smile was tentative. She kissed him first with just her lips, and then her tongue, and hitched her leg over his hips.

"Lucy," Natsu began but didn't know where to go from there.

"You want to move into the cab?" she asked, oblivious.

He was going to say no. He was. He was going to tell her that they couldn't do this anymore. She got up and leapt over the side of the truck and he hadn't gotten a word in yet. He heard the passenger's door open and felt her climb inside. A cloud rolled over the sky, blocking out the stars. He missed them immediately.

"Natsu?"

Natsu got up when she called, finding her on her knees on the bench, and closed the door. Lucy reached for him with cold fingers and those cold fingers moved inside his jacket. He didn't do anything to help or hinder her, torn, thinking about Zeref and what he had to say, and Ultear. She wasn't hit with an assault with a weapon charge because Natsu said yes. He'd said yes. He said yes because he couldn't say no, and at the time, he'd told himself that he could say yes and nothing had to change. They could still do this; they could still be together.

Lucy sat back. "What's going on?"

"Got stuff on my mind."

"Like what?"

He blurted, "Your dad hates me."

She sat back. "What? No—"

"Yes."

She said, "Okay, yeah. But so what? It's really none of his business."

"You're his daughter," Natsu heard himself say. "He wants what's best for you."

"He doesn't know me," Lucy said. "Not really. He spends all of his time working, so how could he know what's best for me?" She leaned in and whispered against his lips, "Forget about that."

She was persuasive, pushing into him hard enough that Natsu felt the cold of the window through his jacket. Lucy kissed his chin and his neck and was moving lower. Natsu asked the truck's ceiling, "Do we keep meeting out here after dark? Do you sneak out? And what about later, Lucy?"

She leaned her forehead against his shoulder and sighed, the hot breath sneaking through the fabric of Natsu's shirt. "What do you mean, later?"

"The future. You're going to graduate law school and you're going to have a nice house and a balcony where you can have a telescope and a boyfriend you meet out in the park where you hook up in his shitty Dakota."

She leaned back. There was mad on her face. "Did he say something to you?"

"Yeah. He said you and me split and my charges go away."

Lucy first just looked at him, perhaps she was searching for the lie. Then she sputtered. "What? Did he really say that?"

"I told him yes." Natsu didn't feel better after his confession. Worse, actually, because now everything was real.

Lucy's look turned incredulous. "How could you do that?"

"What was I supposed to do?"

"Ask for a lawyer," Lucy erupted. "How could you be so stupid, Natsu?"

That stung more than it should have. "It's done."

"It's not done. You need legal representation and you need to fight this. You're being taken advantage of and once we prove that—" She trailed off as she filled in the rest of what would happen.

"Then what? Your dad loses his job?"

"Worse. Probably." She bit her cheek hard, gathering fortification. "It doesn't matter, though. What he did was wrong."

"It matters," Natsu said. "It's your dad."

"I don't care," she said, though it was obvious that some of the wind had been taken from her sails. She still loved her father.

"Forget it, Lucy. I said yes, the charges were dropped. It's done."

"So we just don't see each other anymore?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"No," she said stubbornly. "I don't want that."

He'd never broken up with a girl before, it had always been the other way around, and he'd never had to let go of someone he loved. It was hard. "I do."

"You're just saying that. We'll get a lawyer and—"

"I don't have money to pay a lawyer," Natsu snapped.

"There are ones that work pro bono."

"You think I'm going to win a case against your rich, respected father using a pro bono lawyer? I'm not even in law school and I know that's not going to fucking happen."

Lucy growled in frustration and backed out of the truck through the driver's door. Natsu watched her for as long as he could as she trudged over the snowy field, then a car slowed and picked her up at the service road. He was almost worried but it was an Audi SUV, like the kind her uncle drove.

Natsu stared at the space she'd been for a long time afterwards, reconciling that hollow feeling in his chest.

Eventually, it got too cold to leave the heater off. Natsu turned on the truck and once it was on, he drove. He considered Zeref's words as he approached the highway. The northbound ramp would take him to his mother's house. He suddenly missed her viciously but he didn't want to be anywhere near his father, who she'd invited back into her house two weeks after the restraining order was issued. He was bad, she was sometimes worse. They fed off each other's sickness.

Natsu kept driving, past the heart of Magnolia, too, to the outskirts. He didn't realize he was going to Gildarts' place, though, until he was pulling up the long driveway. Gildarts' restored yellow Mustang was there and there was a light on inside the house.

Natsu got out of his truck and the sound of the door closing sent Rosie, Gildarts' hound, into a fit of yodels. The front door opened and Gildarts was there in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. The smell of fried chicken wafted out of the small house and Natsu's stomach cramped.

"Hey, kid."

"Hey."

He knew all of Natsu's tells. "Rough night?"

"Yeah."

Gildarts stepped back and welcomed him in. "Dinner's just finishing up if you're hungry."

"Thanks."

Natsu stepped into the familiar house and crouched for old Rosie. He hid his face in the dog's thin fur while she wiggled, happy for the attention. She made him feel better, as she did when they were both small and Gildarts lived next door, back when Natsu's parents were still pretending that they were a functioning family. Hugging her broke the weird stillness he'd been trapped in. His throat got thick and his eyes burned. When he stood, Gildarts was there to take Rosie's place.