The Love of a Lion

Avoiding Lucy

            “Wait, Natsu!” Lucy starts to stand so she can catch up to him, but Loke’s arms tighten around her.

            “Where are you going? Natsu can take care of himself; you don’t need to follow him. I know you’re probably upset that he found out, but I’m sure-“

            “Natsu already knew about us…”

            “Oh… You told him?” Loke tries to catch Lucy’s eyes, but she won’t look at him.

            “He found out after our last date. And a few… A few minutes ago we almost-“

            “Lucy!” Erza yells as she and Gray run over to where Loke and Lucy are still crouched. Loke drops his arms and helps Lucy to her feet and they turn to look at the new arrivals. Erza sees the two thieves sprawled motionless on the ground and says, “I thought I heard fighting. Good job getting the criminals. Where’s Natsu at?”

            As she asks, Natsu comes strolling back to the group, Happy flying next to him. His eyes look dull as they glance over at Lucy, but then he cracks a forced smile and shouts, “We got ‘em! Now we can go eat. Come on guys, I’m starving!”

            “Good, you seem to be feeling better,” Erza quietly, and then add louder, “Yes, let’s go. Natsu, grab one of the bodies and I’ll grab the other. We can go get the reward and then all get dinner together.”

            The group picks up the bodies and hurries back to the vehicle. Lucy and Loke walk behind the others at a slow pace. Suddenly, Loke grabs Lucy’s arm and pulls her into a dark alley. She opens her mouth to protest, but they’re cut short by a kiss. Loke’s lips melt together with hers and her eyes flutter closed. Wrapping her arms around his neck, Lucy’s mind goes blank. Loke pushes her back against a wall and deepens the kiss.

                       

He then pulls away and smiles as he looks down at her flushed face, whispering in her ear, “I’m going to go back now. We need to have another date soon, so we can continue on with this.” Loke winks at Lucy, gives her another quick kiss and vanishes with a flash of light. 

            Lucy sighs and tries to calm her breathing. Then she leaves the alley and rushes to catch up with the rest of her friends. She meets them back at the vehicle to find them tying the thieves to the roof of it.

            “Uhh…”

            “They won’t fit with you guys in the back, so we decided to tie them to it and hope they don’t fall off,” Erza says as she glances at Lucy’s shocked expression.

            “Oh. Okay, that makes sense…” Lucy goes to climb into the back seat when she hears the boys arguing.

            “You need to sit by Lucy! Stop arguing about it and just do it!”

            “Why can’t you sit by her?”

            “I don’t wanna, okay?!”

            Lucy peeks over the side of the vehicle to see Natsu flaming mad and Gray staring coldly at him.

            “Did something happen between you two?”

            “So what if something did? Just sit by her, okay? Or I’ll walk.” Natsu turns and stomps to get in the back.

            Lucy quickly ducks back behind so that Natsu doesn’t see her. She frowns down at the ground. She can’t think of a way to fix this. But she has to come up with something to make things go back to the way they were before.

            “What happened with you and Natsu?”

            “Eek!” Lucy jumps and spins around. Gray appeared behind her out of nowhere. She puts her hand over her rapidly beating heart and tries to remember how to breathe. She opens her mouth to say something when Erza yells back at them.

            “Guys, get in. We need to head back and turn these two in.”

            Lucy and Gray glance at eachother before quickly climbing in. Lucy sits next to Gray without a word and doesn’t look at Natsu. The ride back is going to be long and dead quiet.