Important A/N:

Warnings: Violence, sexual content, language, the use of illicit substances. Mature audiences only.

THERE WILL BE MULTIPLE PAIRINGS. Meaning, I'm going to put Natsu with other people, too. So. If you're not down. You know. Thanks for the visit.

This is set in the same universe as Heartbreak Grows in the Garden. You don't have to have read one to enjoy the other.

Chapter 1

You don't just blurt love is a curse.

Love. What did it mean? Natsu loved his black converse shoes. He loved the way they gripped the road when he ran. He loved his leather jacket, too. He loved the thong of rope he had around his throat, the one that was wrapped up around a dog's canine. Macabre? Zeref told him when he was young that the tooth belonged to a dragon, and Natsu hadn't parted with it since, even after little Erik Cobra told him he watched Zeref knock it out of a roadkilled dog's head. It was special.

Love.

It made people better and it made people worse.

Love.

Love was a curse.

Love was a curse Natsu fell into blind and happy.

Love.

It was like the stars that shone in Lucy's eyes. He only caught sight of them for a second, then, with her arms wrapped around his throat, she tipped her head back and laughed. That laugh was carefree. Drunk. Sure. But free. Natsu kissed her throat, the only part he could easily reach. She pulled him down, down onto the snowy ground, clumsy, uncoordinated. He landed on top of her. The breath exploded from her lungs in a burst and stayed that way. She gasped, in and out with frantic gulps, and then she caught her breath again and laughed more.

"Are you okay?" Natsu asked into her neck.

Lucy made a noise that wasn't exactly a yes and not quite a no. Natsu propped himself up on his elbows so he could see her better. Her cheeks were rosy, the wind kept nipping them. Her hands, too, were chapped. Too many times they'd slipped into the snow unprotected. The coat she wore was open and her shirt, a tank top not quite appropriate for mid-winter, was dusted with the cold white powder.

"Lucy?"

"Mmhm? I'm fine." Her hands snuck into his jacket and up inside his shirt. Her touch was bitterly cold. Bitterly. The kiss she gave him, though. That was something else. It tasted like her uncle's Disaronno. It was hot and it was humid and it made him push his hips into her. Lucy crooned.

"We should go back to my truck."

"You can't drive."

"I don't want to drive." Natsu kissed her again and tried to impart his meaning. Lucy's croon elongated and sank into his bones. She got it. Natsu got to his knees and pulled her close. The skirt she wore was too short, it came up on her legs and there was only a small scrap of underwear and Natsu's pants separating them.

"Put your legs around me."

Lucy did. Natsu rocked backward and stood. Snow clung to his knees and the toes of his boots, in his hair and up his sleeves. Lucy brought some with her, too. Did she care? Natsu didn't think she thought about much of anything then.

There wasn't far to go, steps at most. It felt like forever, travelling from the front door of the house party he'd dragged Lucy to, to the truck. He couldn't move fast or sure enough, his feet got caught on rocks and lawn gnomes left out in the cold and a recycling bin that was full of empties and cigarette butts and foil. He sent the last flying to a symphony of Lucy's giggles.

Finally, his truck came out of a crowd of other parked vehicles. Natsu put Lucy's butt against the Dakota's body and opened the door with one hand. He thought it should be easier after that and released her. Lucy fell back into the car ungracefully, smacking her hand of the gearshift and her head off the console. She swore.

"Sorry."

Lucy never accepted his apology, not by traditional means. She grabbed the lapel of his coat and dragged Natsu inside. They didn't fit. He had to push up the center console and lie Lucy back down. There was a sugar packet that got stuck beneath her, and a bill for his phone, a loonie, too, that Natsu found when he lifted her behind to remove her underwear. He couldn't say why he put the last on her tongue, nor why Lucy let him. His head was too fuzzy for semantics. He kissed her, though, and liked the way the dollar tasted.

Lucy pushed him back so she could pull up her shirt. Her breasts came out, heavy and pink and spilling from Natsu's hands. He kissed them.

Someone giggled; it wasn't Lucy.

"Did you close the door?" Lucy murmured.

"No." He had not. Natsu reached back and grabbed the handle. The door thunked closed. Lucy pulled at his jacket. He parted with it.

"This, too." She yanked his shirt. Natsu wrenched it over his head, then balled it up and shoved it beneath Lucy's so she'd be more comfortable. She kissed him again. And again and lifted her hips to rub over the front of his pants. Natsu rectified that, undoing his jeans with one hand while he reached into his glovebox with the other. The whole line of condoms came out and spilled on the ground. Lucy laughed; it wasn't a very nice laugh. If Natsu was soberer, he 'd be more self-conscious but… As it was, he scrabbled in the dark because though it wasn't an ideal time for Zeref to be ringing in his head, he was there, telling Natsu Protection. You have to use protection, idiot. You don't want to get some girl knocked up.

Natsu fumbled the package twice before he got it open, both times because he was distracted by the torrid look Lucy was giving him, the way her fingers snuck between her legs or plucked at the tips of her breasts. His success in getting the package opened was celebrated with a relieved grunt. The condom went on without much hassle and he pressed at her opening. Lucy touched his cheek and pulled him down for an open-mouthed kiss. Her hips tilted and suddenly, he was filling her up and she was moaning and he was grabbing her shoulders hard enough he was afraid he was hurting her. Lucy never asked him to stop. She locked her legs around his middle and dug nails painted the colour of sunsets into his shoulders. Natsu set a pace brutal enough that the truck's springs croaked in displeasure and Lucy's breath came in quick, frantic puffs that fogged the air.

He wasn't sure if she came or not by the time he did, filling the condom. He wasn't as attentive when he was drunk as he was when he was sober. Lucy acted like she didn't care. She put a kiss on his temple and one on his cheekbone. One on his lips. Then she slumped back and stared at the ceiling.

"What time is it?"

Natsu pressed the Info button on the dash. "One."

"In the morning?"

"Yeah."

She groaned and drunkenly fished her phone off the floor. The screen lit up, showing seven missed calls. "My dad is going to kill me. I told him I'd be home by eleven. And I'm drunk. No." The last was pure denial.

"Stay with me, then."

Lucy hugged her phone to her chest and looked at him. "Are you kidding right now?"

"Zeref won't care if you're drunk or not."

"My dad's going to kill me for staying out two hours later than what I said but just imagine if I told him that I spent the night in an old movie shop."

"You're nineteen, you can do what you want." The more Natsu spoke, the surer he was that this could work. "And that old movie shop is an apartment now. There's even a stove." Like that was the qualifier. "Just text him or something."

"My dad doesn't text," Lucy said plainly.

"So call him."

"No."

"Do you want me to call him?" He never would have offered if he was sober, Jude Heartfilia was a monster in his own right.

"No," she repeated. Sitting up, she fixed her bra and her shirt and searched for her underwear. She found the scrap of clothing by the light of a car pulling into the driveway. Natsu looked out the back window and felt his heart sink.

"Hell."

"What?"

Natsu peeled the condom off and dropped it on the floor mat then did up the front of his pants. "Gildarts is here." He'd recognize that old cruiser anywhere, it's boxy frame and faded blue and white paint.

Lucy peeped out the rear window. "Shit."

Yeah.

"Do you think he's here for us?"

"Someone probably called in a noise complaint." Regardless, though, Gildarts was going to make a stop at the truck. Natsu sunk low in his seat, thinking maybe that would help. There was no saving it. Gildarts knew exactly where to look, he knew Natsu's truck off by heart, after all, it was parked in Gildarts' own driveway at least a couple times a week.

A flashlight tapped harshly on the window.

"Don't answer it," Lucy said foolishly.

Natsu ignored her ridiculous suggestion and, after putting the key in the ignition, he rolled the window down a few inches, exposing Gildarts' bearded face. It was hard to see his exact expression in the dark but Natsu imagined it to be annoyed. "Officer." He kept facing a little forward as he said it, so Gildarts wouldn't smell the alcohol on Natsu's breath.

Gildarts didn't dance. "Heartfilia's behind me. Came into the station in a tizzy about this party."

"He is?" Lucy got on her knees and searched the winding road for her father's car.

Natsu cranked on the truck's motor, intent on getting out of there. Gildarts reached in and turned it off. "I don't fucking think so."

"I need to get her—"

"You've been drinking and so has she. I'm not letting you drive out of here. Out of the car, both of you, and go wait by the cruiser."

Lucy was the first to mobilize, though she put her coat on inside out. She took the time out in the cold to fix it, and the cascading curls she'd spent hours weaving before setting out that night. She could fix herself all she liked, Natsu thought, she still looked like she got disheveled on the bench seat of a vintage Dakota. He liked it. Her father wasn't going to. Natsu found his jacket but not his shirt and thought that was good enough if he zipped it up. He got out and then took her hand and she allowed for it.

Gildarts looked at them both and shook his head.

"What?"

"Nothing." He gave Natsu his back and made his way toward the chaotic house, muttering about fools.

Jude Heartfilia drove a shiny black BMW with halogen bulbs, so Natsu knew exactly when he pulled onto the narrow city road. Lucy, too, knew, and put an inch of space between her and Natsu as seventeen-inch wheels crunched over an interlock driveway in suburban Magnolia. The car door opened and Jude got out. His black down-filled coat puffed up around his chin; his hands shook with anger.

"Lucy. I've been calling you."

Lucy lied succinctly, "My phone died."

Jude's glare could freeze a man in his tracks. It was his lawyer's glare, Natsu knew, the one he used in court when he had someone in his crosshairs. "Get in the car."

"Daddy—"

"Get in the car, Lucy. I won't tell you again."

She slunk away from Natsu like a scolded dog and folded herself into the warmth of the BMW. Jude waited until the door was closed before addressing Natsu.

"When I found out my daughter was seeing you, Mister Dragneel, I told myself it was a phase. There are plenty of men in law school, I told myself. Intellectuals that will challenge her. Men worth her time. She's more stubborn than I gave her credit for, though, and won't let go of a bad thing, even when it's what's best for her. Because she can't recognize when to stop, I ask you to put an end to this."

Natsu repeated, "Put an end to it?"

"Stop calling. Stop dragging her out to these parties. Stop snooping around my home."

"I don't—"

"You do. It stops tonight. You're not to have anymore contact with my daughter," Jude said firmly. "She has a bright future ahead of her but you're holding her back."

"I love her," Natsu heard himself say. "I'm not just going to stop seeing her because you say so."

Jude's mustache was thick and puffed out when he was displeased. "Is that your final stance?"

"Yeah. Of course it is."

Natsu expected more of a fight but Jude spun on his heel and got back into his BMW. The car spun out getting back onto the road. Natsu took in a deep breath of cold winter air and let it all out again. He felt heavier afterward.

In the house, the music was turned down when Gildarts ordered it. Natsu supposed he could have waited for him to come back out and drive him home but he wanted to walk. He got moving, leaving his truck where it was. He'd come back for it tomorrow.

Natsu was most of the way home when a huge lifted truck tore down the side street past a convenience store marked Pinky's. He knew before the truck stopped just fifty meters away that it was going to be trouble, though how he knew, he couldn't say. Instinct or something.

Three doors opened and three men got out, all with their faces covered. One held a batt, one a pipe and one a weapon that Natsu couldn't clearly see but thought glinted like sharpened steel. His adrenaline spiked and his drunkenness fell to the wayside.

No words passed between them. In that eerie, dangerous silence, the batt came at him first with a wide swing that Natsu slipped beneath. Straightening, the pipe was there. He caught that just barely and his hands went numb. Natsu forced his fingers to flex around the piece of metal and tore at it. The wielder wouldn't give it up easy.

While Natsu struggled, the batt came down on his ribs. Pain flared. Natsu held his breath and jerked the pipe away from his attacker with speed and force. He hit the batt wielder on the backswing and caught the man holding the small, deadly weapon across the bridge of his nose. He went down clutching his face; cursing filled the air.

Natsu had no time to celebrate. His thigh was hit with the baseball batt and his leg gave out from under him. He was hit twice more, once in the stomach and once in the kidneys and was shoved to the ground.

"Hold him."

Hands closed on Natsu's shoulders. His wallet was yanked from his pocket and the necklace from around his neck and that was too far. Natsu rallied his strength and punched. It was limper than it should have been, and un-aimed. It still got Baseball Batt in the eye.

"Fucking pink haired faggot. I'm not going to just hurt you." Foul smelling spittle hit Natsu's cheek. "I'm going to kill you. Give me that." The man tore something away from his friend and Natsu finally got to see with clarity what the final weapon was—a blade long and thin. He struggled against the man holding him in place. His chest was sat upon and his hair was gripped and forced back. Natsu still punched and bucked.

"I told you to hold him."

"I'm trying. I—"

Lights rounded the corner, throwing the whole scene into relief. Natsu's attackers swore again and hurried to rise. Natsu's fingers were mashed into the pavement by fleeing boots. He barely felt that pain, it was overshadowed by all the rest. Still. He rolled over on his side with every intention of getting up and—

"What the fuck." A car door slammed over the sound of tires peeling away. Boots crunched snow and knees hit the ground next to Natsu's chest; Gildarts' worried and furious face came into focus. "Are you okay? Where does it hurt?"

Everywhere. That wasn't the word Natsu spat out, though. "They're getting away. We have to—"

Gildarts pushed him back to the ground. "Don't move." He pulled out his radio next and started chattering into it so fast, Natsu couldn't keep up. His head was spinning. He closed his eyes.