Stellar Mistakes

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."