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Stellar Mistakes
By : Rhov
Category: +. to F > Fairy Tail
Views: 14748 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail nor do I make money from this fanfic.
Chapter List
- 23
- 24
- 25
Chapter 24
Two Scoundrels
They finished their drinks, left the roof, and returned to work. As night settled in, Loke ordered takeout, and they kept on working. With all three of them making calls and hours of rewriting plans, they managed to finish the work around dawn.
Freed had to be roused from a nap with his face pressed against the desk, and Lucy felt worn out from twenty-four hours without sleep. Loke left to the parking garage with Freed, worried for him and urging him to take a taxi home, while Lucy went out the front doors into a city still cast in partial darkness.
She checked her phone and realized that the trains had not started up at this hour on a Sunday. She figured she could kill some time, maybe catch a nap in a café…
"Lucy!"
Just as she was turning to go, a familiar car pulled up, and she saw Loke from the passenger side with his window rolled down to shout at her.
"Get in. I'll drive you home."
Her mouth dropped. "But…"
All she could think about was that day in the rain. She had been running late, desperate to catch the last train, ready to sprint to the station, when Loke pulled up, just like this, and invited her into his car. That was the night they had truly started this thing between them. If she got into that car, she was certain it would be a repeat of that night.
Did she want it? Yes! And no.
As she hesitated, her stomach gave a loud growl. She went bright red with embarrassment, and by the raised eyebrow, she knew Loke had heard it, too.
"S-sorry," she muttered, holding her stomach. Of all times!
He just smiled at her, and his eyes shined through his glasses. "Maybe we should get a bite to eat. I'm a little hungry myself. There's a place I really like that's open this early. We'll have some breakfast, then I'll take you home. Nothing else." He rolled his eyes and confessed, "Frankly, I'm too tired for anything else."
He sounded honest, so Lucy opened the car door and slid into the passenger seat.
The place Loke knew was not some high-end café as Lucy had expected. It was none other than a McDonald's drive-thru.
"Breakfast at McDonald's?" she exclaimed. "That's what you really like?"
"Actually, I'm a huge McNugget fan," he confessed. "Always with mustard. Though barbecue sauce is good, too."
"What are you, twelve?" she muttered, and she heard him chuckle softly. "Actually, I like the food here, too. I ate it a lot in university."
"I practically lived off McDonald's while in uni," he confessed.
They ordered food, found a place to park, put their orders on their laps, and chowed down on egg McMuffins and chicken nuggets. It cracked Lucy up, that Mister Loke Leo, Creative Director of Fairy Tail, was into McDonald's fast food.
He smirked over at her. "You think it's funny that I eat things like this?"
"It's cute," she confessed.
"Cute," he muttered, dipping another nugget into his plastic container of mustard. "Not the word you'd normally use to describe a grown man."
There was a bashful look on his face she had seen once before, and it made her chuckle while her heart blazed.
"After an all-nighter, fast food tastes great," he insisted as he popped the nugget into his mouth. "Maybe that's why I ate it so much in uni. I got a bit fat, too, so I had to take martial arts to help me lose the weight."
He kept surprising her, and the more he opened up like this, the more attracted she felt to him.
'I said I couldn't do this. I said to keep my distance, but … right now … I really wish…'
Loke finished his food and turned the wheel of the car to head toward Lucy's apartment. Their conversation turned to work.
"Thank goodness it seems like things will work out," she said with a sigh. "I'm sorry you were stuck dealing with it, though."
"Don't be," he said, focused on the road. "In a sense, this is my battle."
Lucy raised a curious eyebrow. How was it his battle?
The morning sun gave the car's interior a warm glow. As he drove through the quiet, empty, Sunday morning streets, Loke murmured.
"I … owe someone a debt. Someone who helped me when I needed it, back before I was promoted."
"Who?"
"The CEO of Fairy Tail himself, Makarov Dreyar. He helped me out of a serious jam, and to repay him, I made a promise that I'd take Fairy Tail to number one." He looked straight ahead at the road in front of them with clear, determined eyes. "I keep my promises, no matter what!"
Lucy had no clue what to say. She could only stare at him as he drove. She remembered the conversation from their team's night out, what Loke and Natsu had said.
"The idea that we could win this account and become the top ranking agency in the kingdom isn't a pipe dream."
"It takes an ambitious man to get to where you are, sir."
Maybe this was why he had that boyish look on his face. People throughout the company thought it was all about Loke's ambition. It wasn't! He was doing all this to make good on a promise he made, a debt he owed to the CEO.
"Maybe I am a scoundrel," he said out of nowhere.
Lucy jolted. "Huh?"
"Even if it's for a promise, there are some lines that shouldn't be crossed. I've done some selfish things, telling myself it was all for that promise, all for the sake of Fairy Tail. Even the idea of keeping my promises, it's all a matter of hubris. In the end, I got this presentation for myself. It was for my pride, and I dragged all of you into it. Like a scoundrel, I was focused on myself and not on the people who should matter most to me."
He stopped the car, and Lucy was startled to realize that they were already at her apartment. He turned to stare at her, and his face was solemn, even a little concerned.
"Do you want to see this scoundrel's face anymore?"
His words cut straight to the hesitation and doubt Lucy had been feeling for days.
She once called him a sneaky scoundrel, yet since then, she had seen the scoundrel in herself as well. She had been turning a blind eye to things, making her possessive feelings toward Loke seem important.
"I'm a scoundrel, too," she stated.
He smiled, and his eyes shined behind his glasses. "During this short time, you've become quite a woman. I … admire that about you."
There was something sad about the way he smiled. He surely recognized what she was doing, the distance she put between them, not taking his calls, avoiding him in the morning. The way his face seemed to debate but finally come to a conclusion, she could tell that he planned to respect her feelings and leave it at that.
"Tell me if anything changes," he whispered, as if this was a secret now that they had to hide even from each other.
Lucy turned away. Struggling with her heart, she opened the passenger door and climbed out. She paused with one last moment of hesitation before finally shutting the door behind her. When she turned around to him, her face was calm.
"Thank you for taking me home, Mr. Leo," she said formally.
His reply was just as professional. "I'm sorry to work you so hard, Miss Heartfilia. Get some rest. I'll … I'll see you at work."
He tipped his head to her, then drove off. As Lucy watched the car drive away from her in the glow of the morning sun, she felt like a hole opened in her heart.
If he really was a super ambitious, totally selfish, horrible man who only cared about a promotion, she felt that she could just hate him and feel better. It wasn't like that, though. He did not give her that sort of easy conclusion. Instead, he looked like the proverbial lion with a thorn in its paw, sad and pathetic and in pain.
The scoundrel! How dare he look so cute when he was like that!
Even as the car disappeared, Lucy remained standing there, frozen for a while, feeling ready to cry. She thought if she put distance between them, these chaotic feelings would go away.
They wouldn't. Not that easily. Not after how deeply she had fallen for him.
Now it was over, and she wondered how long it would take to heal from this pain.
- 23
- 24
- 25
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Stellar Mistakes	By : Rhov Category: +. to F > Fairy Tail Views: 14748 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail nor do I make money from this fanfic.

Stellar Mistakes