Baby, you's a man on a wire
Risking all that you've got
For the love of your life
Lucy was a bad disease, rotting Natsu from the inside. She was all he thought about. He wanted to talk to her and though he knew it likely wasn't wise, he broke at the end of the second day after she'd left—five days so sober, his teeth hurt.
She wouldn't answer her phone or return his texts. She wouldn't contact him on Instagram or Twitter and her Facebook was horribly silent. He tried everything, telling her that he needed her, apologizing, though he didn't know just what he was saying sorry for, begging.
Silence. Silence. Silence.
Gildarts came into the Bunkie a couple times to remind him to shower and eat. Natsu put himself into the bathtub but he did not eat more than a few bites of anything at any time. Couldn't. Everything was just too raw and he couldn't figure out what would make it better.
Gildarts went to work. He came back. He left again. And came back again.
Natsu's phone buzzed a few times. Once was Zeref, asking him how he was. Natsu ignored him. His mother called. He didn't have the guts to see what she wanted and after the second time his phone went to voicemail, she never called again. Angel texted him, too, just how's it going? While he was in the middle of trying to figure out if he should tell her to fuck off or not, Cana reached out to him, not because she knew he was fucked up and needed someone but because she was.
There were only so many days a person could stare at a ceiling, slowly itching their skin from their arms before they went stir-crazy and took the first out that came to them. Natsu put on clothes that he took from the bag he hadn't unpacked, jeans, a T-shirt, and stepped outside for the first time in days. The sun made him squint and cold air surprised him. July was gone and here was August, some days were bitterly hot, others bitterly cold, the most temperamental of the summer months. It was his mother's favourite.
He met Cana at the Patch, outside of her new low-income home. She was in her leather jacket today and a pair of black tights with mesh in them. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. She looked wild, on the hunt for normalcy but pushing away every semblance thereof.
There was a bottle of vodka in her hand, disguised as a purple water bottle. She thrust it upon him as soon as he was near.
"I'm okay," Natsu told her.
"Suit yourself. More for me." She took a huge swig. "Let's go."
"Where are we going?" Natsu asked.
"Does it matter?"
Gildarts would be wondering where he got off to if he wasn't back by the time he got home, but Natsu had been cooped up for so long, he thought no, it didn't matter much. He just had to get out.
"Let's go to the beach," Cana decided, though it was a bit cold for that. She tried to go for her bike; she was so unstable on her feet, though, Natsu was sure they'd end up either with a DUI or dead.
"Let's just walk. I need to stretch my legs."
She was easy going when she was drunk and fell into step beside him. "Okay."
The beach was deserted; people shy of the cool breeze. Cana chose the same picnic table Natsu and Mira had those weeks ago. She dropped down on the bench and took out a joint. She had trouble lighting it, the breeze snuffing out her lighter time and again. Natsu finally cupped his hands around it for her. Thick white smoke worked down into his lungs and filled a void he'd been too aware of for too long.
Cana tried to pass him the joint, Natsu stared at it. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Then take some."
It wasn't heroin. It wasn't even addictive the way heroin was. He took it and chased it with a cigarette.
"What's been going on with you lately?" Cana asked. "I haven't seen you around much."
He shrugged. "I've been staying at Gildarts'."
Her face froze; the expression was gone a millisecond later. "What's with you guys?"
"What do you mean?"
"How do you know him? Why do you just sometimes stay at his place? What's with you?"
Natsu took another inhale off her joint; his thoughts were starting to go soft and reality and him were looking very separate from each other. "I've known Gildarts for as long as I can remember. He's kinda like family."
"Like an uncle?"
"Like the dad I wish I had," he said with a laugh that was much too light for the situation.
Cana took her joint back from him and almost dropped it. She caught it last-second and burned the tips of her fingers. If she felt it, she made no indication. She killed it dead and then was quiet for so long, Natsu thought he'd said something wrong. She picked up her water bottle and drank three huge mouthfuls and that seemed to loosen her up again. "So you like, live with him sometimes?"
"Yeah."
"Is he chill?"
"Yeah."
"Does he ever talk about his family?"
Natsu shook his head. "Nope. As far as I know, me and Zeref are it."
She made a noise like disgust and took another hit off her water bottle, obviously in the mood to get right fucked.
"Maybe you should slow down."
"Why? I don't have anywhere to be tomorrow."
He bit back the old man lecture he was working towards. Who was he to tell Cana how to live her life?
"Did you get your shit figured out with Lucy?"
"No. She showed up at Gildarts', though."
"And?"
"And nothing."
Cana snorted. "You fucked her."
He glared at her out of the corner of his eye. "I never said that."
"Please. You never had to. It's written all over your face. You fucked her. And then what?" Cana seemed too interested in his strife. Like she wanted to hear that he suffered.
"She left, okay?"
She laughed, not like it was funny and not like she was being mean, but like she just didn't believe it. "She left you?"
"She didn't leave me." They'd have to still be together for that.
"Then what?"
"We fucked and then she walked out."
"And that's it? You haven't seen her since?"
He admitted, "I tried calling her and texting her but I haven't been able to get a hold of her."
"Maybe she's busy?"
Lucy was never too busy for him.
Cana knew what he was thinking. "Maybe she's fucking with you. It's what I would do. Hypothetically, of course. If I was ever dumb enough to get a boyfriend."
Natsu pressed his fingers into his temple and closed his eyes, listening to the waves crash on shore and the wind whistle in his ear. "Lucy's not like that."
Cana pressed her water bottle into his hand as a silent apology. He drank some without opening his eyes.
"Let's go swimming."
"Now?"
"Why not?" She stood and stripped off her jacket and her tank top and then her tights, so she was standing in a bikini top and a thong. She didn't wait to see if he'd join her, she flounced into the water and disappeared beneath the surface for so long, Natsu was afraid she wasn't coming back up.
He stood, ready to rush in and save her, when her head popped up, out way further than before. "Cana!" If she heard him, she didn't turn back. Natsu imagined that she'd keep going forever if she could, goodbye Magnolia.
She went back under the water.
"Fuck. It's so fucking cold," Natsu complained but took off his jacket and his T-shirt and then his boots and his jeans. He left them all there on the bench and followed her into the skin-pricking water.
Cana came up for air and went under again. Natsu took a fortifying breath and then dove down with her and swam out the rest of the way. He caught her on the verge of slipping past the swim line and held her back.
"It's deeper out there," Cana complained when she was back on the surface again.
"I know." Too deep. He was having a hard enough time treading the water. "Let's just stay here. It's fucking cold."
Cana gave up without much fight and laid on her back, the water lapping at her cheeks. "Tell me more about Lucy."
That was kind of her way of apologizing, too, though Natsu knew she didn't want to talk about Lucy, she didn't really care. The things she clung to were the things Natsu thought were inconsequential. Gildarts. She wanted to know all about Gildarts and disguised her curiosity beneath a sympathetic ear. He didn't understand why she cared and anytime he broached the subject, she retreated. He let her have her privacy and talked all about Law School Lucy. If she was going to let him, he needed to purge.
It took two weeks of leaving the Bunkie and hanging out with Cana, of him sharing her vodka and her weed, of trying to contact Lucy when he was in the thick of things and failing, for Natsu to decide that he could do a late-night and clandestine swing by her monstrous stone subdivision home. He could be subtle enough that one would be the wiser. He'd done it a hundred times between the ages of fifteen and eighteen.
It was a bad idea and ended well before he could really get started, and by a surprising party—Zeref appearing on the street two over from Lucy's, a cigarette in his mouth and his hands in his pockets.
As soon as he spotted him, Natsu swung right back around, almost confident that his hood would hide his face, but Zeref knew him too well to be fooled by a piece of fabric. He could pick Natsu out of a crowd without ever seeing his face, just as Natsu could do the same.
"Natsu."
Natsu sighed and stayed where he was, not turning around for his brother but not running, either. Zeref gripped his shoulder and turned him to the north, toward a quiet street with nice Lincolns parked on curbsides. "What are you doing here?"
Zeref turned it back around on him. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm just…" He tried to think of a decent lie.
Zeref didn't need him to explain. "You need to be smarter than that."
"I want to see her."
"You can't."
"But I saw her a few weeks ago."
"That was then, this is now. You can't just barge in."
Natsu voiced his real fear. "But what if something's wrong?"
Zeref waved him off. "Nothing's wrong. She's probably vacationing on some rich girl beach down south before school starts."
"How do you know?"
"I just know, okay? Come on." Natsu remained planted. Zeref pushed him a little between the shoulder blades. "Trust me. Come on. Come on. We can't stay here."
With a bit of force, he corralled Natsu in the opposite way of Lucy's home, past more sparkling cars to a road with very little streetlights. There the Dakota sat, its modified muffler spewing out pale smoke, its engine ticking away. There was a guy in the front seat, the same one that came to the apartment those weeks ago. He threw open the door and got out.
"Why are you back? Where's the car?"
"We can't do it tonight," Zeref said calmly.
"We told them they'd have it by four."
He shrugged. "Too bad."
The man shook his head. "Too bad? Do you know how much shit we'll catch for this?"
Zeref said, "Some things are more important."
"Like fucking what?"
"I have to take my brother home."
"What the fuck," the man swore again. "Are you serious right now?"
"Sure am. You're welcome to go get it yourself."
"You know I can't get in like you can. I always set off the alarm."
"Then I guess it's not getting done."
More swearing.
"Either get the fuck in the truck and shut up or walk," Zeref commanded.
Natsu thought Zeref was going to get clocked. Zeref stood stoically and waited.
Grumbling, the man opened the truck door and got in. He slammed it closed behind himself, unnecessarily loud. Zeref let out his breath and his shoulders dropped just a centimeter. "Get in."
It was one of the last things Natsu wanted to do but when Zeref told you to do something, you did it. It was like his superpower.
The man had moved all the way over to the passenger's side despite getting in through the driver's. Natsu had to move a small bag of coke to sit in the middle, the stick between his legs. Zeref took the wheel and the baggie out of Natsu's hand. "August, my little brother, Natsu. Natsu, August."
August said, "The junkie."
"Don't fucking talk to him or I'll put my whole fucking hand down your throat and rip your guts up," Zeref said so, so calmly that not only was August perturbed, so was Natsu.
Zeref flipped on a dime, skewing Natsu's perception. "How's Gildarts?"
Natsu said a cautious, "Good."
"His Bunkie?" The truck started rolling forward.
"Good." He tried not to look at August from the corner of his eye but it couldn't be helped. He was staring out the window and looked… scared, to put a word to it.
Zeref got more serious. "And how have you been doing?"
"Fine."
"No Pearl?"
"No."
Zeref showed him his teeth in what was supposed to be a reassuring smile. "Good. Dragneels don't—"
"Fuck with heroin," Natsu finished.
"Right. We don't fuck with heroin."
Another two weeks scraped past. Maples got red and birches got yellow and Cana got drunker. There was still no word from Lucy, though every time his phone rang, Natsu thought of her. It was Gildarts. Always Gildarts, wondering where he'd gotten to and when he was coming back. He caught Natsu stumbling down the road drunk one night and hadn't gotten off his ass since. If that was what having a real father was like, he was almost glad his was such a piece of shit.
He avoided Gildarts and got wrecked, but he didn't touch heroin, and that's how he convinced himself that it was all okay.
He stopped by the apartment for the first time in nearly a month to raid his brother's weed stash. Zeref was home and the apartment looked better than when Natsu had left it. There was a new TV, bigger and better, and a new coffee table, too, only stained with a few cup rings.
The biggest change that Natsu could see, though, was that there were people there again. They lounged in almost every corner, smoking cigarettes or pipes, drinking, laughing, having fun, just like they used to. It was so familiar that Natsu felt a small knot of tension unwind itself. He hadn't even known he was carrying it around.
Zeref gave him what he wanted and offered up the truck, too. Natsu accepted. Zeref withheld the keys an inch from his palm, though, to ask, "Are you coming home tonight?"
"I don't know."
"It's been quiet without you."
And he was tired of Gildarts' Bunkie's four walls. "Yeah. Yeah, I can come back. Sure."
Zeref smiled and there was no lunatic waiting behind that expression, it was just him, the same brother that stuck a lifejacket on Natsu when he was four and let him float down the lake, just to see how far he'd get. Mean but not malicious.
He used the truck to pick up Cana and texted Gildarts to tell him that he was going back home for the night. Gildarts had plenty to say on the matter. Eventually, Natsu had to turn his phone off. Cana let him brood all the way to their favourite spot on the beach.
Natsu tried not to think about that stuff as waves crashed against shore and a seagull yelled. He found it on the horizon, flying over a swollen rain cloud. A storm was coming; they couldn't stay out there for much longer if they didn't want to get soaked.
"Can I just say something?" Cana's cheek was pressed into the wood of the table. Right by her lips was an unhelpful—and, in Natsu's opinion—untrue bit of advice that said, when we start, we all have the exact same thing. Everything.
"No." Whenever Cana got that look in her eye, she wanted to give him a bit of bluntness that usually hurt like a hammer strike.
"You know I'm just going to say it anyway, right?"
"Then why ask?"
"Polite?"
He snorted. That was not the word he'd use to describe Cana. "Sure. Go ahead."
"She doesn't want to talk to you."
"Shit sakes, Cana."
"Why else would she be ignoring you when she tried for so long to get a hold of you?"
"She broke into my room. Does that sound like a girl that doesn't want to fucking talk to me?"
"She broke in for one last fuck and left."
The thought had crossed his mind. "You don't know Lucy."
"But I know girls."
"You know girls like you."
"Every girl is like me," Cana said. "When you get down to it."
No girl was like her, self-destructive to the very bitter end. At least, none that Natsu knew. He brooded in silence, listening to the waves crash and thunder rumble in the distance. He smoked a cigarette and lit another off the cherry.
Cana signed dramatically. "I'm tired of this. We have to do something else."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Anything."
"I don't have any cash, do you?"
"No."
"Then we sit on the fucking beach and drink shitty vodka."
Cana scratched her name into the wood. Whatever she was thinking, Natsu didn't know if he liked it. She asked, "Are you and Lucy still separated?"
"I don't fucking know."
"If you don't know then the answer is yes."
Zeref had a way of making people do whatever he wanted, Cana had a way of making them believe everything she said. She was always so sure of herself.
He glared at her. "So what?"
She sat up and put her mouth on his and for an instant, that hollow pit in his guts didn't feel so fucking hollow. She leaned back and it came back full-force. He needed to stopper it.
Cold wind picked at Natsu's clothes and the first drop of rain fell from the sky. "We're going to get soaked."
"Then let's go somewhere else."
He stood and offered her his hand. She needed it, she stumbled and almost fell into the sand. She focused on the ground after that; Natsu watched the road they had to cross to get to the parking lot opposite. It was because of that that light green caught his eye. He turned his head and recognized Brandish's short hair.
She leaned against an eighties Thunderbird and waited for a man wearing a bandanna to count out some bills. He had a hard time doing it because he kept glancing at her with doe eyes. Natsu knew love when he saw it. Brandish seemed annoyed with him and barked an order. He focused more on his money and counted properly.
When he handed it over, he tried to brush her hand with his. She wouldn't allow for it, making the exchange with practiced movements. Brandish tucked her money into her bra and a dropped a bundled up brick into his hand. Then she got into her car and left him in a plume of exhaust. The man watched her until the car was no longer visible, then for a little bit longer, too, like she'd decide to just turn around and return for him.
He finally gave up when a cruiser pulled by. He pretended to be watching the water, waiting for the cop to be out of sight, then dropped the brick into the garbage can and left.
Natsu propped Cana against the driver's door of the Dakota. "Wait here for a second."
She was drunk, not dull, and asked, "Why?"
"I just want to check something out. Stay here."
She leaned back; her hair staticed against the window and her eyes drooped closed. That was good, he felt less judged when he went through the garbage can and found what the man had thrown in there.
Heroin. An entire brick of it.
A rough voice whispered, "What is it?" Natsu jumped and turned and Cana cackled, pleased that she'd snuck up on him and had obviously scared him. He suddenly had the jitters. She asked more normally, "What is it?"
"Nothing."
"Then let's go." She was too drunk to care about the lie. She swung her arm through Natsu's and pulled him off.
We've reached my favourite night in Heartbreak.
