And love is not enough
The stars rolled out above Natsu's head, so clear and so bright here on the beach at the edge of town where no streetlights shone, he could actually make out the greens and pinks of each cluster. Lucy would have told him it was the gasses that filled the galaxies that made them that way. She would have gushed that it was so rare to get an opportunity to see them like this. He thought about texting her. She'd like to see it. She'd come if he asked, too.
In the interest of keeping what tentative peace he could, Natsu put his phone out of reach and instead tried to share the knowledge with Cana, though she seemed exasperated to hear it. It could have been because he couldn't seem to explain anything without bringing up Lucy. Or it could have been that she didn't care much for the sky. Whatever the case, she changed the subject just as soon as she could, asking Natsu,
"Are things still weird with your brother?"
She knew almost all of his terrible secrets for one reason: because she asked. She told him last week that it made her feel less fucked up. The feeling was mutual. It felt good to air his dirty laundry to her. Better than it did when he aired it to Mira. Mira cared too much about everything recently. Cana? She took his plight without getting too invested, only morbidly curious for curiosities sake. Because of that, the only secret he managed to keep was the body buried out in the quarry.
Natsu said, "He's still lying about working at the coffee shop, if that's what you mean."
"Why don't you just ask him what he's doing at the apartment?" Everything for Cana was very straight-forward. When she had something to say, she said it regardless if people hated hearing it or not. Sometimes, it was a lot. But it worked for him. The more Natsu lied, the more Natsu craved the truth.
"If he wanted me to know, he'd tell me."
"Okay, but he won't, so you gotta tell him to come clean. The way I see it, it's your business, too," Cana said. "You live in that apartment; you use the money Zeref's bringing in. You deserve to know where it's coming from and what he's doing to get it."
Natsu locked his hands behind his head. The ground beneath him was lumpy, the grass still hot from the mid-July sun.
Cana noticed his shifting but didn't seem to care how uncomfortable he was. "If you're usually tight and he's just started keeping secrets, something's not right. You have to ask yourself, what's so bad that he's lying, huh? What shit has he gotten himself into?"
"Yeah..."
"So ask him," she pressed.
"It's not so easy." Lately, Zeref had been more difficult to approach.
"Just think of it this way, anything he does affects you, too. If you don't believe me, after my mom died, I was living with one of her old friends. She grew pot in her attic and told me about it because if the cops came, she told me to get out of there to her old boyfriends' house and hang out there, otherwise, they'd find me and put me in the system." It sounded to Natsu like maybe that's what should have happened anyway. "Sure enough, her place was raided and you know what I did? I didn't fucking listen and look where it got me. I was stuck at Fairy Hills going through therapy and now I have a fucking apartment I can't afford because I can't keep a shitty job. Tell your brother you want to know."
When she put it that way...
"Alright."
Cana flashed her teeth. "Good." Things got quiet between them. "Do you have another joint?"
He almost always did now because he was trying to use it to replace the hard stuff. He's been doing okay for a couple of weeks with some help in between, meaning when things got really bad, he'd shave off thin bits of the brick he'd commandeered from Angel, and smoke it, telling himself it was actually helping to ween him off. He wasn't that good of a liar, he felt just as lunatic about it now as he had been the first time Ultear and Brandish had let him try it, but illusion was everything when you found yourself knocking on the door of lifetime-abuser.
"Here." Natsu tossed her a package of cigarettes. Cana found the joint rolled up and stuffed in the corner. She lit it and took a few inhales before rolling over and passing it his way. He smoked the rest, so much greedier now.
Cana watched him stub out the cinders and keep the roach. "Is there anyone else?"
"Huh?"
"Girls, Natsu. Are you fucking other girls now that Lucy's off the scene?"
"I guess."
"You guess?"
"A few, yeah." His bedroom's revolving door had slowed down to Ultear and occasionally Brandish but that was still more than he was used to.
"Good." Cana rolled over again, positioning herself on top of him and he realized that she was interested in joining the ranks.
Her bikini top got lost in the sand and her underwear, too. After, he gave over his shirt. It fit her badly; she laughed about it, though, and told him she had more bikinis. Natsu still offered to buy her a new one anyway; she told him she wasn't a whore.
He drove her back to a part of town called the Patch, low income housing that Zeref tried qualifying for once upon a time on Gildarts' request. It didn't work out for some vague and likely made up reason, if Natsu knew his brother. Like Cana said, a person needed a steady and legal job to qualify for that funding and Zeref never had much time for either.
Natsu pulled up to a nondescript townhouse and dropped the motor into neutral.
Cana took the door handle. "Thanks for the lift."
Natsu heard himself blurt, "What are you doing tomorrow?"
Cana looked at him reprovingly from the corner of her eye. "Why?"
The question was loaded. Natsu shrugged nonchalantly. "Just wondering."
Cana slipped out of the truck without a response. Natsu bit back the urge to chase her. Girls like Cana could run forever and he was tired of running.
He drove home slowly, hoping not to catch the attention of any police. The last thing he needed was a driving under the influence charge. Some people pulled out around him and honked. Natsu was too paranoid to speed up any more, though he knew that going too slowly was just as bad as speeding or erratic driving. He kept checking his rear view and fettering the gas. Heroin didn't make him feel like this. The thought was sudden an unwelcomed. He felt want claw at his guts. He took a deep breath and turned on the radio. That was almost worse. the DJ's voice warbled and warped, getting too loud in all the wrong places. He shut up and Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones came on.
Natsu listened to the song for forty seconds before it took him on a bad trip and he had to turn it off. Then it was just him and the Dakota and the bumpy road. His head was not a quiet place. It was screaming at him about how pot almost always seemed to do this to him when music was involved and how Black Pearl never treated him like this. He dug his fingers into the steering wheel.
"We don't fuck with heroin. We don't. We don't fuck with heroin." Repeating his brother had helped in the first week and a little into the second but by the time the third came along, it was losing its effectiveness. Now? The words were all but meaningless.
He scratched his arms to see if he could scrub the feeling away. It only made his skin burn. He smoked another cigarette, though he'd smoked so many that night that his tongue was prickly. That and the promise of a small hit when he stopped was enough to get him through the car ride home.
Natsu put the truck in its usual spot. There was another truck beside him that he didn't recognize. He didn't think much on it until he was at the front door of his apartment and an old man with a long grey beard exited. He only glanced at Natsu before dismissing him and walked with purpose, the hem of his jeans dragging the ground beneath his work boots. His red and black plaid shirt was invisible in seconds.
Zeref was sitting on the couch when Natsu came in, a thick stack of cash in front of him. He was counting it out and making small piles of it, one for rent, one for gas, one for food, one for cell phones, one for vice. He looked at Natsu through a fringe of black hair.
"Where have you been?"
"Out."
"I needed the truck."
Natsu shrugged. "It's back."
"I don't need it anymore," Zeref said exasperatedly.
"Then what's the problem?" He didn't know when he got to be so bratty.
Zeref chose not to fight with him. "Just tell me when you're going to take it."
Natsu loosened his scarf. It was going to need to be washed soon, it was getting hot out. "Who was that old guy?"
Zeref's head was back in his money. "Hm?"
"The guy that just walked out of here. Who was he?"
"Just a guy I'm doing some work with."
"What kind of work?"
"Just mind your own business, Natsu, the less you know about anything, the better."
"So it's not legal work."
"Everything's legal if you don't get caught. There's pizza in the fridge," he added without missing a beat. "Beer, too, if you want."
Must have been a great pay day. Natsu remembered his conversation with Cana. "I deserve to know."
Zeref sat back and looked at Natsu directly. "Leave it alone."
"No. If it's going to bring the cops around, I want to know."
"Nothing's going to bring the fucking cops around. I got everything under control." Zeref waved him off. "Get out of my face now, I got shit to do."
"You don't know—"
Zeref stood and pushed him by the shoulder toward his room. He was strong and soberer than Natsu was. He had anger on his side, too. "Go."
Natsu went automatically but once he was staring at his own four walls, he shoved his hands through his hair, frustrated. Everything made him fucking frustrated lately. His brother's taciturn behaviour, Mira's complete dismissal, Cana with her hot and cold friendship. His phone buzzed and he added Lucy to the list as he got an Instagram DM request from a girl named Aquarius. The profile picture was a generic screen cap of a galaxy.
Natsu chucked his phone on his dresser. It knocked over some deodorant and cologne and spun to the floor. He left it there and went for the pipe he'd stuffed under his mattress. He couldn't find it immediately and felt a hot poke of panic pierce his guts. He searched deeper.
It still couldn't be found.
Natsu pulled up the mattress entirely. The box spring was fucking empty.
He held his breath and thought hard about where he put it last.
Definitely under his mattress. He'd had the same hiding spot since he was eleven.
Natsu marched back out into the living room. "Where is it?"
Zeref was on his phone texting to someone and barely looked up. "Where's what?"
"My pipe."
"Oh."
"Oh? Zeref? Where the fuck is it?"
He set down his phone and looked at Natsu calmly. "I threw it out."
Natsu repeated, "You threw it out."
"I told you to get rid of it. You didn't listen. I made the decision easier."
"Like you told Brandish not to sell to me anymore."
Zeref was without shame. "Kinda, yeah."
Natsu was so furious, he had no words. He marched to the front door but didn't make it very far; Zeref grabbed his collar and held him back.
"It's late, you're not going out."
Natsu hit him well before he remembered making the conscious decision to do so. Zeref stumbled back and swiped the back of his hand over his bleeding mouth. He didn't look mad about it. He looked relieved. Like he knew what to do with Natsu when he was throwing punches. Better than he knew what to do with him when he was drowning in grey heroin smoke. He tightened his hold on Natsu's shirt and got a dangerous look in his eye. He was toeing an episode. He hadn't had one in years.
"You want to hit me? Come on, then."
Natsu was all of a sudden nervous. He backed up, squirming to get out of Zeref's iron grip. "Fuck off."
"No, go ahead." He waved at himself. "Hit me. I deserve it."
"Fuck off, Zeref."
"I know you want to, so just fucking do it. Hit me. Hit me. Hit me." He was screaming now, and pushing Natsu. Natsu did what he asked and punched him in the mouth.
Zeref looked surprised. And exuberant. "Again."
Natsu held up his hands. "No. I'm done; I'm not doing this."
Zeref always knew how to get him, though. His punches were just as fast and brutal now as they had been when they were teenagers. He got Natsu in the ear, of all places. His head rung and his eyesight doubled. His knuckles stung next, and Zeref was bleeding from his cheek. He looked gruesome, smiling, and completely mad. He hit Natsu back, pushing him into the TV stand. They both went over, the tube breaking, a bottle of beer breaking, the coffee table breaking. Zeref was on him, never giving Natsu a chance to catch his breath. Natsu held off his brother and got in a few more hits of his own before his vision got hazy.
It was difficult to say how long he'd been unconscious for. When he tried to check his phone, the screen was cracked. He tipped his head back. The curtains were drawn but he could see the orange glow of a streetlamp, meaning it was still dark out. Like it was dark inside, the only light coming from the washroom.
Pain pierced between Natsu's eyes. He squinted them closed and groaned. "Zeref?" Hit me. "Zeref?" I deserve it. "Zer—" He didn't know why he was calling him. The apartment felt dead in the way abandoned places do. He wasn't there, and even if he was, Natsu didn't want to see him.
He rolled over through the broken TV glass. It looked like Zeref had started to clean it up but gave up after picking up the largest slices. Small ones poked Natsu's forearms annoyingly. He got to his knees and then to his feet and brushed what bits off he could before realizing that his head was spinning like a merry-go-round. He had to stop and keep his head level for the feeling to go away.
A truck slowly went by the front window and turned into the parking lot. Natsu was sure it was Zeref and he was sure that he wanted to get out of there before he had to see his brother. He bit the inside of his cheek to help him focus through the queasiness and staggered out of the front door.
He jogged blindly, across the street, through an alley or two, and then out into the path of a passing car. Breaks locked up and a horn honked. Natsu felt the bumper just kiss his thighs. It put him off balance but he managed to catch himself on the hood.
"Are you fucking crazy?" the driver yelled.
Natsu waved him off and kept going.
There was a group of people on a street corner. One of them broke away from the others. "Natsu?"
He knew that voice. He tried to find Angel but spinning made him dizzier. He had to wait for her to come to him, hands out, the most concerned expression on her face that he'd ever seen her wear. That must have been her nurse face.
"Are you okay? Did you get into a fight?" She was already pulling out her phone. Natsu thought it was to call an ambulance but then he recognized his brother's face in her contacts list. In the picture, he was lying back in the grass with a cigarette in his mouth, no shirt.
"I'm fine," he said.
She wasn't looking at him. "Zeref's going to want to know."
"Who do you think did this?"
Her finger hovered over the call button; her bottom lip disappeared.
Natsu sought to distract her. "Can I crash at your place tonight?"
She wavered for so long, Natsu thought she'd say no, and when her head nod finally did come, it was almost imperceptible.
Angel lived in a basement apartment that smelled exactly like she did. Incense and cinnamon body lotion.
It was sparsely furnished, a couch, a kitchen table that hadn't been used as such in a long time—it's top was covered by an aquarium that was filled not with water but sand. A scorpion clicked its claws against the glass, eyeing Natsu when he got too close.
"Sit," Angel pointed to the couch. Natsu sat and leaned back. The couch was puffy and comfortable in the way that ancient couches were. He felt immediately better. Tipping his head back cleared his airway and closing his eyes soothed them. He was going to have two shiners, for sure.
Angel came back laden with supplies. She sat on the arm of the couch with her legs looped over his middle and started gently daubing the blood away. She got to his nose and Natsu's eyes watered. He thought it was fractured, at the very least.
Angel asked, "What did you do to piss him off?"
"Asked him why he keeps going to that apartment and lying to me about working at the coffee shop."
Angel burst the months-long mystery for him. "The guy that lives there runs Magnolia's chop shop."
"A chop shop?"
"You know, they get stolen vehicles, disassemble them and sell off their parts."
"Why would he be talking to him?"
Angel raised one perfectly sculpted brow.
Oh. "He's working in the shop?"
Angel shook her head and Natsu went one step further. "He's stealing the cars?"
Angel let him stew in it but did defend Zeref a little, saying, "We've all done things we're not really proud of to get by."
Natsu thought about the last shipment of Angel's stolen drugs he'd pedaled. Was that any better or worse than what Zeref was doing? Any more dangerous or harmful to others?
His moral compass was shoddy at best lately.
"Your brother knows what he's doing," Angel added. "He's always in control."
Natsu ran his tongue between his swollen lips and his teeth. "Yeah."
She added stinging antiseptic to his face and bandaged where she could and then gave him some oxies that he didn't really need but wanted. He took them with a glass of water she brought back from the kitchen.
Angel got herself back up on the arm of the couch and watched his eyes get glassy. She did talk, though Natsu lost focus on what she was talking about beyond, I've been thinking about you and other similar words that made sense in a sentence, but not when they were spoken to him from Angel's mouth. He only really came back to it when she started undoing the little white top she wore.
He'd seen the tops of her breasts before, she was always wearing revealing clothing, but this was different. They looked fuller and rounder and more precariously perched in her push-up bra. She lifted up and her shorts went the same way. Her bra and underwear matched, white with little red cherries. She was a little soft through her middle and toned everywhere else.
"You can touch me."
He could. If he wanted.
"Please."
He just looked at her. She took his hand and put it on her thigh and once he was there, it was like he could move. He skimmed the inside of her leg and brushed over the cotton of her panties because that's what you did when a girl put your hand between her legs. Angel sighed and spread wide for him. He made circles above the fabric of her underwear, caught in some insane loop where he knew fucking his brother's on-again, off-again girlfriend was a bad idea but somehow in a place where he didn't care.
She moaned and spread wider still. Natsu pulled her underwear aside and used his other hand to get inside. He almost panicked finding large labia. Everyone he'd been with before that moment had been neat and tidy. Angel, though, was bold everywhere. Natsu didn't understand why her body being different from everyone else's should make this more taboo but it did. He liked it, in a way, even if it was intimidating.
"Both of them," she commanded. It took Natsu some time to puzzle through her vague command and realize what she wanted. He'd never had anyone ask for anything anal before but obliged, moving slowly and carefully. Only partway inserted, Angel started to shake. Another centimeter inside her and she came.
The tremors stopped and she shifted position, getting on top of him and undoing his pants. She had a condom; Natsu didn't know where it came from. He wasn't really in a place to care. She did all of the work for him, putting his dick in her mouth and sucking him off so he was so, so close to coming, then putting the condom on and sliding down on top.
He closed his eyes and let it happen.
A solid, long and repetitive drone brought Natsu from a foggy dream-like place. Someone was sleeping on his lap. They moved and his legs got cold. He opened his eyes and watched Angel throw her shirt on over her naked torso and trip into her underwear.
It's the door, Natsu realized. Someone was at the door making that banging sound. And his dick was out, soft but still in a condom. He was a fucking mess. He pulled up his boxers but that was as far as he got. Angel opened the door and Zeref was there, tall and brooding and looking worried beneath his bruised jaw and cheek.
He had been focused on Angel, saying something like, "Richard said he saw you leave with Natsu," but he trailed off when he saw Natsu on the couch. He barely skipped a beat, though Natsu thought he missed nothing. "Let's go."
Natsu didn't have it in him to argue. His head was cottony and his mouth was dry and all of last night's abuse was coming back, amplified. "Washroom?"
Angel said, "Third door on the left."
While he got rid of the condom and cleaned up, Zeref and Angel spoke quietly in the living room. Natsu could hear them until he started to pee, then everything got washed out. When he came back out, Angel was standing much closer to Zeref and he was inclined toward her. Zeref looked up, saw Natsu, and stood straighter.
"Thanks for taking care of him."
Angel half-smiled. "Anytime."
Zeref waved Natsu out of the door. He grabbed his Converse and walked through Angel's backyard barefoot.
I wish I could go back and tell insecure 2015 Freyja it's okay, 2018 Freyja will be without a care, writing terrible multi-slut shipping stories with anal and large labia and boys that are so fucked up and lost, they don't know who they are anymore. 2018 Freyja is a fucking star.
