And I can't make love in my grave


Some rich man bought a decommissioned distillery factory in old town and reopened it as a nightclub called Tartarus. It was a long and rectangular room with a massively tall ceiling open so all the duct work could be seen. In and amongst that, laser lights had been installed. They pulsed in time with some throbbing music Natsu didn't know, something without words that seemed to live and breathe.

There were booth tables snugged up against the walls and lamplights fused to the tabletops. The centre floor was for dancing and people did that in droves. It was a madhouse. He saw men pass gold pills to each other on tongues. He saw hands and bodies and no boundaries, he saw someone get hit and he saw someone get kissed, all within steps of each other.

A person bumped into him and he had to clutch the bag of stolen drugs to his chest through his leather jacket to keep from throwing them all over the ground. He was so nervous he was cold sweating. The only other time he could remember feeling this way was when he was fifteen and tried to tell Lucy they should be something more than friends. The memories clashes and he felt like he was splitting at the seams. Who was Natsu Dragneel? The guy that parked with Lucy on the grass and looked at the stars in the sky or the guy that ran drugs stolen from the hospital?

The cold sweat turned to snakes coiling in his belly. They writhed over one another with dry scales and made his stomach heavy. His sweating reached new levels, and now his mouth was starting to water.

Keep it together, he told himself, and then again aloud. It didn't help.

There was a bathroom across the club. He barreled through the crowd, using his weight and shoulders to his advantage. Someone shoved him when he dug his elbow into their back; he barely felt it. Someone else tried to dance with him. He deked around her. Someone offered him a cube of sugar soaked in acid and he pushed their hand away. The acid dropped and the person went with it, scrabbling to snag it from the floor before it was lost.

The crowd thinned and then broke apart and Natsu felt like he was coming up for air. He beelined it to the door marked M and tumbled inside the empty washroom.

Green fluorescent lights shone on graffitied stalls and checkered back and white tiled floors and walls. There were two mirrors. Natsu caught a glimpse of himself in one. He was saturated with sweat and looked peaky.

He cranked on the cold water and stuck his head beneath the faucet, clutching the bag to his chest all the while. The cold water cleared his mind and cut through his cold sweat. He sputtered and shook the hair from his eyes. Runners of water snuck down the collar of his jacket and into his T-shirt, too.

He grabbed some hand towels and dried; his hair stuck up at odd angles. When he looked at himself in the mirror, he saw the kid that played with Rosie in Gildarts' backyard. He saw the one that liked to hide in the snowbanks. The one that wore Zeref's pretend dragons tooth around his neck because his big brother told him so.

None of this felt right.

The sink's porcelain was cold and dug into his hand as he leaned forward and pep-talked himself in the mirror. "It's only once. You'll make the trade, get the money, and you'll get out. You'll be fine. Everything will be fine. People do this all the time. Zeref does it all the time. You're good."

His phone buzzed in his pocket and his heart leapt into his throat. He took it out and saw Gildarts had texted a picture of Rosie with three marshmallows stuffed in her cheeks. Natsu let all of his breath out and leaned against the wall. He didn't know whether to laugh or scream. Or just to text Gildarts a picture of the drugs, his location, his supplier and the person he was selling to.

Mom and Dad would still be out of their money and if you don't do this, you know Zeref will. He was already on a precarious perch. He didn't need help sliding off.

The door opened and a tall guy in a mesh shirt stumbled through, he was laughing at something a girl still in the club said. He sobered and disappeared into the stall. The toilet flushed a minute later and the guy remerged and Natsu still hadn't moved.

"Hey, are you alright?"

You, he's talking to you, Natsu realized and cleared his throat. "Fine. I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yep."

"Well, stay away from the girl with the pigtails. She's selling some weird shit. You look like you could lay off it."

"Sure. Thanks," he said.

The guy left. Natsu stood straight; his jacket stuck to the wall and creaked, his stolen drugs rustled. "You can do this." It wasn't that big of a deal. Drugs came and went out of his apartment all the time. And this time, he'd be taking the money and putting it toward something useful.

Natsu slicked back his hair and dried his hands on his pants then got out of there before he lost his nerve.

The club was fuller now than it was a minute ago. The music was different and yet somehow, more of the same. Voiceless, synthetic, upbeat. He saw the girl with the pigtails he was warned about; she had glow sticks threaded through her hairbands and her tongue ring glowed when she laughed with a wide-open mouth. He gave her a wide berth and went to the bar as directed.

A man in thick eyeliner and a cat-eared headband served him a beer and Natsu went to the stool at the very end. There was someone where he was supposed to be sitting. He asked them to move and when they told him to fuck off, he accidentally bumped into them when they were lifting their drink to their mouth. It spilled all down their front. He was screamed at and called a plethora of things he'd never heard of before, but the guy left without a physical altercation. That was good, he didn't want to pause for a moment to take off his jacket, hide his drugs in it, and then throw down. Chances were, he'd get his ass kicked out of the club and everything would be fucked.

Natsu occupied the seat and drank all of his beer in two huge gulps. The bartender returned with another. He downed that one in record time, too, simply because he didn't know what to do with his hands. By the time he was sucking on the dregs, a guy had wandered over. He was huge by any standard and forced Natsu to scoot over because he took up so much room at the bar.

"Salty Dog," the man told the bartender and she rushed to get it for him.

Natsu kept his eyes straight ahead. "You're Angel's friend?"

The man didn't respond. Natsu thought he hadn't heard him but then he felt something poke into his ribs. He looked down and was relieved to see money. He took it as subtly as one could take a large stack like that and replaced it with the drugs. The bag disappeared into large hands.

The man's drink came. He paid, stood, and disappeared into the crowd. Relieved laughter bubbled in Natsu's throat. He let it out otherwise he thought he'd explode.

He put money on the bar for his beer and thought to leave but when he turned, he saw a familiar head of copper hair and a pair of sunglasses. He would have known that face anywhere but the blonde at his side confirmed Natsu's suspicion.

Lucy didn't see him right away, in fact, she was at the bar minding her own business and he should have been leaving to mind his own, too, but he was pulled in. He returned to his seat and ordered another beer. It was weird to watch her; he was doing it anyway.

She laughed at something Loke said while the bartender got them drinks. Lucy got long island, as usual. She paid for her own. It seemed like a stupid thing to be thankful for after everything but he was.

Natsu lifted his beer to his mouth and the movement caught her attention. Her eyes narrowed in on him and he felt his stomach flop with excitement and nervousness. She said something to Loke then slipped through the crowd and to Natsu's side well before he could figure out how to escape.

"I missed you," she said plainly and tried to kiss him. He turned from her.

"We can't do that here, Lucy. Someone might see."

Someone might see? That was his excuse?

He expected her to get mad and tell him to fuck off but she took his wrist and led him away from the bar, through a small crowd of people, and through an unmarked door into a hallway that was dark except for the smears of glow in the dark paint splattered on the wall and glow sticks wrapped around other bodies. Lucy had one on her waist. She placed Natsu's hand on it and leaned back against the wall. He followed her, for some reason, and pressed into her.

Lucy's lips laid against his ear. "Better?"

"It wasn't really what I had in mind."

"So you don't want to be here?"

"It's not so simple."

"It could be. Let's start again. I missed you."

He wasn't sure what he was doing telling her the same but it wasn't anything good. She smiled, though, and he thought it was worth it.

"Did you get my pictures?"

"Yeah."

"Did you like them?"

"Lucy…"

"Yes, or no?"

"Of course yes, but you shouldn't send them."

"I should because I want to. It's not hurting anyone and no one knows. Like no one knows we're here."

"Your dad—"

"Thinks I'm out at the movies with Loke."

"He's okay with that?" It felt so unfair. Loke looked like he crawled out of a slutty cologne ad.

Lucy shrugged. "I don't care what he's okay with."

If that were true, she wouldn't be lying to him about her whereabouts. He didn't get a chance to tell her so, she slid her cheek against his and kissed him and most of his uncertainties fell away. Lucy was right, no one knew that they were there, the hallway was dark, and today was a good day. He made the sale without a hitch, he found Lucy, no thugs were there to break his legs. Everything was going right. The universe was giving him everything he thought he needed.

All he had to do was bend and break the flimsy rules he'd made for himself.

It was easier in the neon-accented dark. He couldn't see anything but the slight sheen of Lucy's hair and the white of her shirt, and then the white of her skin when he pushed the shirt up and touched her generous waist. She was all exaggerated dips and curves and he was hungry for them.

Lucy hitched her leg around his waist and he pushed into her. She moaned against his mouth. He kissed her lips bruised and his head empty and pawed at her. She allowed for it to get so far that he was rubbing her through her panties and she was pushing into his fingers.

Someone gasped loudly just a few short steps away and Natsu refocused. He stopped his ministrations; Lucy huffed and put his hand back between her legs.

"Lucy—we're in a hallway." And his eyes were starting to adjust now. There were four other groups of people in here and all of them were doing something similar.

Lucy straightened. "Come on."

He followed her further down the hall because he seemed to be trapped under some crazed spell. She seemed to know where she was going and went through a door he hadn't seen. It led into an office with a small desk, a lamp, and a computer. Everything was turned off.

Lucy closed the door and turned the lock. When she faced him again, there was something wild in her eyes that he didn't recognize but liked; it matched the chaos his life was now.

She stripped off her shirt to the bra beneath. It was too dark to see its proper colour but Natsu thought it was black. Her skirt was treated likewise. Her underwear matched the bra.

Natsu tried to be reasonable. "We're in someone's office."

"I know."

"You're family—"

"Fuck them and fuck me."

Rationality backfired on him. Her confidence made him hot and stupid. He welcomed her hands pulling at his clothing and got on his knees for her when she pushed on his shoulder, where he pulled aside her panties and licked between her legs in the way she liked best. No one knew Lucy like he did. She was shaking and moaning in moments and coming shortly after that.

She sank into his lap and took him inside effortlessly. Zeref's voice telling him to be smart was so, so distant, the bruises he'd gotten at the hands of Lucy's family were long healed.


A/N: I keep forgetting to bring it up, sorry, but Guest reviewer—I did see your request for a Lucy chapter but for the sake of continuity, I'm hoping to keep it all from Natsu's perspective. It's limiting, I know, and Lucy's interesting and not nearly as crazy in all this, but, alas. Sorry, and thanks for reviewing.