"Oh...! OH!" Cana cried out, right before she crumpled on top of Loke, the two of them basking in their post-orgasmic high.
"L'Chaim!" Loke exclaimed with a smile. "To humping! I was like a river. Did you feel that? Did you feel me sweeping you along with the current of my body? You were like a canoe on my body river," he panted, to the woman lying next to him who was becoming increasingly more annoyed. "Like you'd ever be seaworthy with those breasts... boobies."
"I wish there was a word that meant complete satisfaction and... complete self-loathing."
"I've never seen a woman bite her own shoulder before," Loke reminisced, not hearing her remarks.
"Okay Loke, that was the last time."
"You said that twice last night. You'll be back." He smiled confidently. Ever since their passionate night together on Valentine's, Cana's been coming back to the very willing blonde to have constant repeats of their dirty little secret.
"I'm like your black tar heroin," he continued. "You just need that sweet sweet taste in your veins. Kablamo! And the damage done. Neil Young, yo."
Cana turned to him, hardly understanding what he was saying. She rolled her eyes. "Just get me the hell out of here without someone seeing."
After the pair got dressed, Cana in the yellow club dress she slept over in, and Loke in his blue kimono, Loke checked the hallways to make sure none of his friends were awake. Other than him, none of his roommates were early birds, so they were in the clear.
Loke tiptoed through the den and gestured for Cana to do the same. He led the way all the way to the door, and as soon as she was out and the door closed behind his lover, he turned around to see the curious big, brown eyes of a certain blonde.
"Loke?" Her eyes gravitated to the empty door behind him. "Oh, did you have a sexual guest?"
Correction: None of his roommates were early birds, except for Lucy.
"What?" He feigned ignorance.
"Was it the same girl from the other night?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"It is!" Her face lit up, like she cracked the magician's code. Loke quickly scrambled away, hoping to avoid the barrage of questions that was coming with her newfound interest in his sexual partner. Sure enough, she followed him around the kitchen.
"Oh, my God. You slept with the same girl twice in a row?! Was it a mistake? Was she wearing some kind of disguise?"
Loke scratched his head and fiddled with his fingers nervously on the counter.
"Hey, Natsu!" Lucy called into the hallway. "Loke slept with the same girl twice in a row, I owe you five dollars!"
"I knew it!" Natsu exclaimed victoriously as he joined his friends in the kitchen. "I thought I heard the door open at 3:00 a.m. Those are the sounds of true love my friend. Bet she had the time of her life."
The sounds of another door opening and closing indicated Gajeel's entrance into the kitchen and into the conversation. "What happened? Did I miss her?"
"You did," Lucy replied.
"Man, I love meeting the girls you bring home," Gajeel hit the honey blonde, playfully on his arm. "I like to pretend like I'm your lover on the down-low, Theodore K. Mullins. Damn, Loke," he said, getting in character with a Shakespearian accent. "In our bed? Where we shave each other? I've always loved you, you're my boo."
"Theodore K. Mullins is not my type, man," Loke smiled, amused by his friend.
"So, you gonna three-peat this hoe and not say anything to us?" Lucy teased, bringing her cup to her lips. "Who is this bitch? We want to meet her."
Loke laughed awkwardly as his eyebrows raised. If only she knew who she was talking about...
"Guys, I'm not gonna parade her around like some trophy. You know me, I'm not that kind of guy."
Flashback
A woman stumbled drunkenly out of the hallway in the loft, drawing Natsu and Gajeel's attention who were sitting on the couch watching TV.
"Oh!" she said in surprise. "Loke told me this was the front door?"
Loke quickly slid down the hallway in his socks behind her and he silently started screaming pointing out her beauty to the boys.
"So what's wrong with her?" Natsu asked immediately. "Does she have a hunchback?"
"Dwarf parts?" Gajeel joined in.
"Lovitz body?" Lucy piled on.
"She happens to be an incredibly beautiful woman," Loke said in defense.
But his friends still weren't buying it.
"She another one of your heavy gingers, Celeste?"
"How big are her knuckles?"
"Butter body?"
"She got a Hitler moustache?"
All of the teasing and banter stopped abruptly at Lucy's comment. The boys all turned to her mortified.
"I'm sorry, just, like, I want to banter with you guys in the morning. I just, like, panicked, and I made a Hitler joke. I'm sorry."
Brown Lightning
"Good morning students, these are your morning announcements."
As Lucy walked around her classroom that morning, monitoring her students as they worked on their projects, the voice of Principal Lyra bellowed in her ears.
"The students who won the spelling bee should be smiling on the newspaper cover, but I guess that's just a matter of opinion...
Now, whoever is growing a small patch of cannabis behind the gymnasium... congratulations! You've won a cruise! Report to security to claim your tickets.
In order to increase awareness of the growing epidemic of homelessness in L.A, all students will be given binoculars.
In campus news, the debate over our library's PA system continues, with some students suggesting its volume be lowered while others question its very purpose. More on that story as it unfolds."
"Your science projects are looking great, you guys," Lucy said once she was done. "Love the potato battery, Harper. Good job."
"Thanks."
"Luke, I like your tree exhibit," she said strolling past a little boy with a miniature bonsai garden. She noticed the big sign he had to label project with the words "I've got wood" written on it.
"Might want to think about changing the name. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Whoa," Lucy stopped short at a pinkette with a working metal mechanism. "You built a robotic arm?"
"I think we all know who's gonna win," the girl said to her.
"Anyone can still win, Meredy."
"Even me, Miss H?" asked a boy with a flashlight taped to a balloon.
"Yes, of course." The bell rang, signaling the end of class. "Okay, lunchtime."
As the class all rapidly exited for their break, Lucy retreated to her desk to grade some papers. A stout, chubby boy timidly approached her desk.
"Hey Ms. Heartfilia... can I have lunch in here?"
Lucy looked up curiously and was immediately concerned at his distraught expression. "Oh, no, Nathaniel, what's wrong?"
"In the cafeteria, kids have started playing this game... coin slot. They put pennies in my butt crack. I made 46 cents."
Lucy gasped when the little boy offered up a hand full of coins.
"No, no, no, you earned that. Um, listen Nathaniel, I'm gonna help you out okay? No one deserves to be bullied."
Later that afternoon in the loft...
"So Daphne sent me a cactus."
"Umm..." Gajeel paid his cousin no mind as he approached him in the kitchen, and plopped a potted cactus in front of him. "Okay?"
"She's on a business trip to China, and she sent this to me out of the blue. I'm not an idiot Gajeel. She's sick of me. It's over."
Gajeel put his phone down.
"Who the hell told you that?" He gasped in sarcasm. "Did the cactus tell you that? Is this one of those fortune-telling cactuses because you know-"
"Gajeel, think! She's flying around the world taking business trips in Beijing, meanwhile she doesn't even think I can take care of a plant."
"Because... you can't."
"Any idiot can take care of a cactus Gajeel," he spat bitterly. "Are you saying I'm an idiot?"
Lucy walked into the kitchen and to the coffee maker, curiously looking at Natsu tip over a gallon jug of water into the plant.
"Why are you watering a cactus?"
Natsu immediately lifted up the water jug.
"Because I'm an idiot."
"Daphne sent him a cactus which clearly means she's gonna break up with him," Gajeel explained nonchalantly, texting on his phone.
"Hm." Lucy removed her coffee mug with a perplexed expression. Then she broke out into laughter causing Natsu and Gajeel to look at her strangely.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought that was a joke because otherwise that would be totally stupid and insane! Snap out of it, son," she snapped her fingers in Natsu's downtrodden face.
"Luce, you don't get it! She hasn't been texting me as much since she's been in Beijing. She's probably surrounded by rich, handsome businessmen, and here I am, just her loser, bartender boyfriend who she sent a cactus as a pity gift. This cactus is like a symbol of my relationship with her."
Lucy rolled her eyes.
"Whatever man. Trust me, if she wanted to dump you for some rich, handsome, poetic, well groomed, sexy, rich, businessman, she wouldn't need to travel all the way around the world to get one," she chuckled off handedly taking a sip of her coffee. "I mean you're just..."
Lucy looked at Natsu's criticizing glare, realizing that she was failing at giving him a good pep talk. She chuckled nervously.
"Sorry. What I mean to say is... is that I think you're a really special person Natsu. And Daphne realizes it too," Lucy took a sip of her coffee. "Otherwise she wouldn't be with you in the first place."
She patted his head like she would a puppy, enjoying playing with his surprisingly soft, mane. After a moment of this, Natsu perked up.
"You know what, you're right," he said getting up and grabbing the cactus with newfound enthusiasm. "I'm not gonna quit on this! On her! I'm gonna take the crap care out of this cactus!"
That evening found Loke in his room by himself taking pictures of his sacred unmentionables in his birthday suit. He was flexing his biceps and taunting his abs in the mirror. He was admiring himself and his body, this body that the most devastatingly gorgeous woman he'd ever seen, just couldn't get enough of. To say that he was riding on a high would be an understatement.
"There it is," he said, taking different poses in the mirror. "Look at that. Not bad, just fix the red eye, red eye, red eye. Send."
Almost instantly his phone rang with Cana's caller ID popping up. He nearly dropped the phone with how quickly he went to answer it.
"H-hello?"
"Where are you?"
"Oh, hello Alberona, did you get my junk mail?"
She sighed from the other end of the phone. In a black Camaro parked outside the apartment complex of the gang's loft was Cana, holding onto the steering wheel.
"I'm in front of your loft. I know I said that last time was the last time, but... you want to come down?"
"Yeah, I want to co..." he cleared his throat because he didn't want to sound too excited. "Yeah, I'll come down, that sounds good."
"All right."
"So, I think I changed a life today, you guys," Lucy said excitedly to the guys in the den. "I pulled a Gandhi, a real Gandhi. There's a student of mine, he's been bullied for the past few months, so after warning the kids that there would be serious repercussions if this continued, I delivered a lesson in the key of learning. Learning minor."
As she spoke, Loke quickly slipped out from his room, through his den and out of the front door. Gajeel seemed to be the only one who noticed him while Natsu was busy trying to re-soil his cactus plant which he drowned out with water.
Lucy continued.
Flashback
He's a plump bird who prefers the shelter of a hole
He has a stubby beak
And a nervous soul
Lucy and Nathaniel were standing in front of the classroom when the kids returned from lunch, Lucy playing the guitar singing, with Nathaniel accompanying her on his kazoo. The children sat in their seats staring at her in confusion, as she continued to sing the lyrics to the happy beat.
Because being chased by predators
Takes its toll
Let the sad sparrow fly on...
"I'm sorry," Natsu choked back a laugh. "You think singing a song about a kid is... gonna stop him from getting his ass kicked?"
"I know 12-year-olds can be vicious, vengeful creatures," she continued. "I mean, middle-school girls literally scalp each other. I spent most of sixth grade with a bald spot on my head."
"What?"
"But you can't convince me that music doesn't make a difference... because I believe it can! The kids were even videotaping me on their cell phones!"
"Yeah... that sounds more right," Gajeel said reaching to pull out his laptop.
"I think these kids are gonna really remember this," Lucy continued, oblivious to Gajeel's epiphany.
"What's the song called?" the man inquired.
"Um, "Sad Sparrow" why?"
"This is why," he said, pulling up a video of Lucy on YouTube shorts with Nathaniel that was seemingly going viral with almost 100,000 views. In the video as Lucy sang, the uploader edited X's over Lucy's eyes, and had a crowing sparrow flying over the pair and sending projectile bird poop on the woman's head. Natsu and Gajeel gathered round with Lucy to watch the video, and the boys laughed in amusement while Lucy appeared distraught.
He's not smartest bird
or the most pretty,
He spreads disease
Throughout the city,
"Well, at least the bully's not making fun of that kid any more..."
"That's because they're making fun of... me," she said sadly.
"The hawk just took a little poop on you," Gajeel pointed out with a laugh.
"I'm not proud of myself for saying this, but... it's a really funny video," Natsu said in between chuckles.
Sad sparrow fly on...
"Why can't we just go upstairs for a little Schmidt and Spin?" Loke asked Cana incredulously through her car window.
"You just said that everybody's upstairs in the living room."
"Okay, fine, what about your place?"
"My place is not an option right now. All the models are back. It's like 12 models and 3 rooms. It's like a room full of hungry Russians."
"Uh... yes, please," Loke said emphasizing how on board he was. "Let's go there."
"What about just a little good, old-fashioned car sex?"
"I can't do any of my moves in there," Loke whined. Cana scratched the back of her neck becoming increasingly annoyed, but still immensely hot and bothered. Loke continued.
"I like to improvise with my body. I'm like a sexual snowflake. Each night with me is a unique experience, baby."
"Look, are we gonna do this, or not? 'Cause I kind of need this to happen right now, okay? Isn't there, like, a Starbucks bathroom around here or something we could use?"
Loke scoffed at the very suggestion of such a filthy place.
"What do I look like to you, a Gypsy courtesan?"
"So," Gajeel turned to Lucy, hoping to stoke the fire. Since the video was done, Natsu grabbed his cactus plant and headed to his room.
"How hard are you gonna drop the hammer on the kid who did this?"
"I'm gonna find this kid, and I'm just gonna... open up a dialogue."
"Not gonna work. Take it from me, I used to be a bully."
Flashback
A young Gajeel pushed another school boy to the ground.
"Ow!" He said.
"Brown lightning!" Gajeel yelled.
"Wow, you had a catchphrase?" Lucy asked.
"Of course Blondie. You gotta hit 'em where it hurts."
Their conversation ended when Lucy's phone rang and she answered it.
"Hey, Loke... Oh, there is? Thank you!" She hung up the phone and turned to her friend. "He says we should look out the window. There's a crescent moon out tonight."
"Oh, dip, seriously?"
The pair excitedly scampered over to their bay window to stare at the crescent moon as Loke and Cana quietly entered the loft, and quickly tiptoed to his room.
"Wait... why do we care about a crescent moon?" Lucy asked after a moment of staring.
"I don't... know..." Gajeel answered in realization. "But I'm gonna live up there someday..."
In his room, Natsu had accidentally tripped and fell with the cactus in hand, breaking the pot, spilling the soggy soil and snapping the fully grown cactus into various pieces. He immediately started panicking.
"Oh crap..."
He scurried to try and gather the cactus parts in his hands and scoop it into a cup on his dresser. He collapsed on the bed and sighed when he was done.
He sucked at this.
As such, he decided to call Daphne. He was absolutely losing his mind.
"Hey, Daph, what's up? Hope you're having a great time in Beijing. I miss you; I can't wait to see you. I got the cactus. Thank you so much. I'm taking great care of it."
He left a voicemail given that she didn't answer.
He called again.
"Yeah, things are doing good here. Everything's really cool, just... taking names, kicking butt, you know, all that. So, great, I'll see you Wednesday. You're the best... Nope," he stopped recording the second voicemail since she didn't answer again. "That's not gonna be the one."
He tried again.
"Hey, Daphne, just calling back to say that I get it. Message received. I'm the cactus. If you put me in the desert, I'll grow some needles, too. FYI, I'm not high right now."
And again.
"Daphne! Daphne! Call me back. Call me back, Daph."
And again.
"Daphne, it's Natsu. I am so sorry, I just remembered the 13 hour time difference. So, if you get this one first, could you please just delete the other ones? Alright. I love you. Later."
Natsu immediately hung up mortified.
"Wait, what did I just...?"
Did he just... did he just tell her that he loved her?
"I don't hear anyone out there," Cana said quietly, putting her shoes back on. As she got ready to leave, Loke sat upright, shirtless in his bed, gazing at her with an emotion she wasn't sure how to describe. "I think I'm safe to leave. And I-I want you to know, that that was the last time, okay? This is over."
"But we haven't even gotten to the cheese course yet." Cana stopped cold in her tracks as he spoke. "A little sharp aged cheddar? Mm-hmm. Manchego? Maybe some buttery Gruyère? You sure you want to miss out?"
She slowly loosened her grip from the doorknob.
"I just want to... slowly peel the wax off your Babybels."
Cana was so confused by his dirty talk.
"What... are you even... saying?"
"How about a little stinky Taleggio?"
Still though... it was doing it for her. "Why is this working? I am so turned on right now..."
"Or maybe some cream cheese? Want some cream, baby? You know what? Cana, you should go. Because if you have the strength to turn all this down, do it."
After mulling it over for a moment, Cana nodded her head. "Yeah, I'm good."
Back in the den, Gajeel had talked Lucy into exacting revenge on the person who had uploaded the video; whom Lucy had also discovered was the one bullying Nathaniel. This kid had recorded her without her permission and edited her beautiful song to make her look like an idiot in front of the whole world. Surely a little retribution was called for right?
"So have you thought about what you're gonna do to this kid as payback?" Gajeel asked. "And it's gotta be big. No holding back."
"You've gotta sleep with that kid's mom!"
Gajeel froze. "Okay... maybe hold back a little."
"Let me backtrack a little," Lucy chuckled. "I don't actually want you to sleep with her mom, just get close enough to her to make her think that you've banged her mom. So anytime she tries to bully me or anyone else, she'll be dealing with the woman who's friends with the guy who banged her mom!"
"Oh that's brilliant!" Gajeel snapped his fingers. "And I can just make love to her... in my head."
"Yeah you can... what?"
"Yeah see, I'm a gentle lover."
He wasn't easing her concerns the more he talked.
"I'm attentive and a good listener, and she'll hold my hand in the end."
Lucy stared at him for a long time in absolute silence.
"Yeahhhhh, I think I'll just talk to her myself."
"Good luck with that."
Meanwhile, Cana tried to sneak back out the loft again, but as soon as she saw Lucy and Gajeel talking, she panicked and tiptoed back into Loke's room. Loke smiled at her expectantly.
He knew she couldn't stay away.
"Want to party with Havarti?"
Cana rolled her eyes and sighed.
"Fine. Give me the damn cheese," she said while yanking off her dress.
The next day at school Lucy made it a point to seek out her exceptional, yet problematic pink haired student for a talk about bullying. Recess had been called, and as all the students were gathering their things and exiting, Lucy lightly tapped the girl and asked her to stay back for a few minutes. When the classroom was empty, the blonde pulled up a chair from the desk in front of her student and sat down in front of her desk with an affable smile.
"Hey Meredy," Lucy started as politely as she could. "So, I saw the robot arm in the user profile, and I know you made that video. I thought we could sit and talk for a minute. About that, and Nathaniel."
Meredy's green eyes glossed over her as she fiddled with the controller for her science project making the robot arm pivot on her desk.
"Look, Meredy, I know you're much better than this," Lucy said sternly.
"Yeah sure whatever," Meredy waved her hand. "Can we talk about you for a few minutes instead?"
"I- uh..."
"How come you don't have a boyfriend?"
Lucy, who was unprepared for the invasive question, physical recoiled.
"Well I mean-"
"And why did Mr. Straight from the music department dump you? Is it true that your boyfriend before that cheated on you? Are you barren, Ms. H? And why is your voice so deep like a man's? Your happiness seems like a mask to me. And honestly, can you tell me what you've done with your life to get you to this point? Because whatever it is, I want to do the exact opposite as you. Well actually, forget that last question. I better go."
With that, Meredy got up and sashayed away from the blonde with a devilish grin on her face. Lucy felt a boiling over of rage, blowing steam from every hole in her face like a tea kettle upon Meredy's exit. Without thinking, the red faced blonde made a move for her robotics project to yank it off the table, however, she accidentally ended up tearing off the arm part from the base, with only a few wires left attaching the two parts. Lucy's eyes widened in horror.
"What have I done?"
It had been an agonizing few days for Natsu ever since his freak out which he aptly dubbed "Cactus gate". Daphne had given him radio silence after he blew up her phone with all those voicemails when he accidentally broke her cactus, and it had filled him with nothing but anxiety for days on end. Especially considering what he accidentally slipped up and said in the last one. Now it was Wednesday, the day she was slated to return, and the day of reckoning. When he heard a knock on the door, his body instinctively jumped to answer it.
"Daphne! Hey! Welcome home!"
He opened the door to his girlfriend in a black raincoat, with her hair curled and an uneasy smile on her face. Natsu was holding his fractured cactus in the glass cup her put it in, just to show her the plant was still alive.
"Hey," she greeted nervously. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Welcome back."
"Natsu... are you sure?"
"Did you..." he had a nervous smile on his face. "Listen to all the messages?"
"I did."
"You... did?"
Oh no.
"That sucks."
Daphne got straight to the heart of the matter for her visit.
"You know, I really didn't mean anything by the cactus right?"
"I know! Look, I got in my head, Daph. I thought you sent me this cactus because you were trying to tell me that I can't take care of a normal plant. Which, when I think about it, I probably can't. Plants freak me out. I'm way better with kids, actually."
He blanched hearing his own words aloud. He was spiraling and he had no idea how to stop it.
"Not that I want to have a baby right now! I mean, I can see us having babies-"
"Can you stop..."
"I know! That's not what I meant to say."
"Natsu, come on..."
"I'm sorry, I'm freaking out again. What I meant to say-"
"-no, Natsu, I need to say..."
"Daphne, please... I overreacted."
"I feel like we should break up."
The silence that fell over them after she spoke weighed down on him like a blanket of snow. With those seven little words she succeeded in petrifying his heart.
"Can I come inside?" she asked quietly.
"Natsu, listen. I really like you," she said after Natsu silently stepped aside to let her in. "I do. But I feel so bad whenever you try so hard for me and I think you feel like you're not good enough, even though I always try to reassure you. It hurts me. It hurts you too, I can tell. And I realize this relationship isn't going to go anywhere if we can't love each other for where we're at and be comfortable with each other."
"But I am..."
She shook her head.
"I didn't realize it when I sent it... but then after listening to the seven..."
"Yeah, that was probably weird..."
"Seven, Natsu, seven separate voice mails about the meaning behind the cactus... I don't know, it really just clicked for me, and I just... I don't think that we should do this any more. We're just too different from each other and I don't think it'll work. I just... I need some space from you. I'm sorry."
"Okay, what kind of crazy person destroys a child's robot?" Gajeel asked incredulously through the phone.
"Are you kidding me?! You've been egging me on all week!" Lucy cried holding onto Meredy's broken science project.
"Hey, don't blame your poor decisions on me."
"Whatever," she rolled her eyes, fixing her glasses. "Can you just bring me, like, a bunch of Phillips head screwdrivers and, like, a Crescent wrench and, like, other tool things?"
"What if I'm busy?"
She burst out into a fit of laughter.
"Thank you, Gajeel. I needed that."
The next night found Loke and Cana sneaking away for another thrilling, secret sexcapade. They were far away from the loft and the central city where the both of them lived. Cana pulled up in front of a lively club in a shopping strip in her black Camaro with Loke in the passenger seat.
"What's the scenario?" he asked. "We enter separately, pretending to be strangers meeting in the bathroom. You want me on the can, off the can?"
"No, I just, I just need to pop in this party for, like, 20 minutes," she smiled at him politely. "When I come back, we'll have sex."
"Okay, yeah, let's do it."
"Oh, no. I'm going in there alone."
Loke did a double take. "Well, what am I supposed to do?"
"I'll crack a window for you," Cana said unbuckling her seatbelt and crewing down his window a little.
Loke was mortified looking out the window. "Crack a window for me?"
"Well yeah."
"What am I, your sex dog? What... what if I have to go to the bathroom? Why don't you just give me a chew toy?"
"Come on, Loke, stop being such a big baby," she said in a patronizing tone.
"Oh, my..." Loke's jaw dropped when the realization finally hit him. "Are you ashamed of me?"
"Yes." Cana deadpanned. "Absolutely. 100%. I'm 100% ashamed of you. How have you not realized this already?"
"Wow... Well what-what a revelation."
"Okay, come on, Celeste," Cana said rubbing his shoulder, in an attempt to remedy the situation. "I can't be the first woman who's ashamed to be with you."
"Wow... okay, look," he said to her, dead seriousness in his almond shaped, brown eyes. "I won't go into your party, if... if you go to breakfast with me tomorrow. In public."
Cana thought about it for a moment. She blinked her long eyelashes over chestnut brown eyes mulling over it for a moment. All prevailing logic would tell her to say no. After all, this was her best friend's roommate who she was sneaking around with, whom she found annoying with his overbearing, uptight personality. And yet... there was something so endearing about him that she was almost sure he didn't even see in himself. Their talk when she slept over at the loft, the stinky perfume he gave her as a Christmas present, even comforting her after her fallout with her family on Valentine's Day, were all things that showed her that maybe he wasn't a total sleaze after all.
What was the harm of indulging him in this one simple request?
"Yeah, okay."
"Really?"
"Really. I mean, I can survive one breakfast," she said with a playful smirk. "I'll be back soon."
"I hope it works," Lucy whispered to Gajeel. "I didn't get a chance to test it."
"Even broken, it's still got a shot at top prize," he whispered back. "I mean, have you seen some of this crap? "What can old people do?" "Does it taste better with hot sauce?"
After calling Gajeel for supplies, he came over to the school the previous afternoon and helped her try to put the two halves back together, leaving the pair to stay and work dead through the night, given both of them weren't that great with robotics. Now, Gajeel had come to school the next day to act as moral support for Lucy while they both waited with baited breath for Meredy to present her robotic arm. It was the day of the Science Fair, where parents, teachers and students were all clustered in the auditorium with various contraptions and displays on foldable tables which people could observe the students' hard work.
"My friends! Guess what I just learned today?" Natsu said deliriously happy, hooking his arm over both of their shoulders. "What's inside of a pumpkin. Apparently, a lot. I didn't know."
Lucy's eye twitched as she shrugged Natsu's arm off of her.
"Okay, Natsu you have to get out of here," she demanded.
"You see him Luce," Gajeel interjected softly. "Daphne broke up with him yesterday. He's clearly on the edge of a breakdown. I don't think it's a good idea to have him by himself right now."
Staring at a hippie-fied Natsu chiming with some small girl's bells made Lucy's vein ticked in annoyance. Right now she was already on edge being at risk of losing her job, so she didn't have the patience to empathize with Natsu's situation, so Gajeel's words were going in one ear and coming right out the other.
"He has to go!" she whisper shouted to him. "What is he doing anyway?"
"The hell if I know?!"
"Well get him out of here before I kill him."
The blonde straightened up when she saw her pinkette student, Principle Lyra and and a tall tan woman with a pixie cut and mean face approaching them.
"There's Meredy! Hi, Meredy," Lucy smiled at the girl before going to shake hands with the older woman. "And you must be Meredy's mom, Kyouka? I'm Ms. Heartfilia."
"Right," the woman said disenchanted. She scrutinized every aspect of Lucy's appearance with judgmental gray eyes, making Lucy feel like a juvenile in her presence with her side ponytail and clunky glasses. "You're the singer. The teacher who sings."
"This is Meredy's project," Lyra said proudly gesturing to it. "A robotic arm. Start it up, Meredy."
With Lyra and other judges surrounding the girl's table, Meredy grabbed her controller and proudly fiddled with the joystick to get the arm to pick up a potato. Much to her surprise, her machine sparked up once, then twice, then a third time, leaving a wisp of smoke in its wake. Everybody jumped back as sparks flew.
"And another project bursts into flames..." Lyra said in disappointment. "Meredy, what happened?"
"Someone must have sabotaged it!" She said quickly. "Bet it was Nathaniel."
The poor boy in question was standing a little ways off trying to use a giant pair of scissors to pick something out of his teeth like a toothpick.
"Hey!" Gajeel yelled when he noticed. "Get my scissors out of your mouth! What is wrong with you?!"
"That boy has been creating problems for my daughter," Kyouka said to Lyra, holding Meredy close. "What are you gonna do about it?"
"Nathaniel! Come over here."
Lucy's heart dropped like a pebble when she saw how the boy paled when called by the principal.
"Wait, actually..." Lucy stepped forward. "This is my fault. I sabotaged the science project."
"You did what?"
"It was totally unprofessional," she continued. "And I'm sorry, but your daughter is... how do I put this? Meredy is... difficult."
"Difficult? You're the one that sabotaged her project!"
"Lady your daughter sucks," Gajeel said stepping forward. He felt bad watching the scene unfold before him without doing anything, especially since he was the one egging her on to retaliate against the little girl. More importantly though, he wasn't going to sit back and let this lady steamroll his friend. "Do you hear me? She is a demon seed and the spawn of Satan. And I do believe I speak for the entire human race when I say that people like her, should not be building robots!"
"Who are you?" Kyouka narrowed her eyes at him.
"Brown lightning bitch."
"I want her disciplined," the woman said sternly to Lyra.
"I assure you, I'll be watching Miss Heartfilia very closely. My office, 9:00 a.m." she turned to Lucy who at this point, was sure she was doomed.
Fast-forward to the next morning, Lucy sat impatiently in the waiting room of the principal's office, legs shaking at everything that could possibly happen to her, especially with Kyouka in there talking to Lyra again that very moment. Right on cue, the door opened to revealed the tan woman in jeans and a black and white blouse walking out of the office followed by Lyra. She gave Lucy a disapproving look on her way out. Lyra crooked her fingers at Lucy for her to come in.
"Hey. Hi. I am so sorry, Lyra."
Once she was inside and the door was closed behind them, Lyra stood and stared at her in silence for a minute.
"Don't be... I love it!" She threw her arms around the blonde. "Lucy, you're a real teacher now!"
The teacher's arms hung limply at her sides in confusion.
"What?"
"You're a kid hater! You're finally one of us. Bring it in. Welcome."
The stood still in an awkward embrace for a minute too long for Lucy's liking.
"I'm-I'm not a kid hater."
Lyra finally released her and put back on her professional face.
"That's right. None of us are."
After her meeting with Lyra, Lucy returned to her homeroom for morning registration. As the students filed in, Lucy stopped a certain short haired pinkette before she got to her seat.
"Hey, Meredy. Can I speak to you?" Meredy stopped by the front desk. "Look, I know I'm not your favorite teacher, and you don't like my style. That's fine. But I'm not gonna change who I am, so you're just gonna have to deal with it, and respect it too." Lucy turned behind her desk and picked up her guitar and something else. "Also, you're gonna take this paper, and you're gonna sing a duet with me."
For the first time since she's known her, Meredy seemed shaken by something. Her emerald green eyes popped out from her smooth pale face.
"What?!"
"Oh, yeah," Lucy said with a smile before addressing the class. "Everybody, settle down. Camera phones are encouraged."
"No..."
"Oh yes. One, two, three, four."
"You really don't want to be seen having breakfast with me, do you?"
It was the next morning. Loke and Cana were in a diner surrounded by a bunch of older couples enjoying breakfast.
"Are we even still in L.A.?" he asked in discontent, poking his fork at his waffles.
"Loke, you and I are not together," Cana said as nonchalantly as she could. "We're not in a relationship. We're just having sex."
"And-and I love it!" Loke interjected.
"I'm not gonna be some... prize that you get to show off. Look, guys are always just... showing me off. And I hate it."
"Cana," a genuine smile tugged on Loke's lips as he leaned forward. "Look, I... I want to tell people because I think that you are the... dopest, flyest... smartest, ballsiest, bitchiest, most truly terrifying woman that I have sexually enjoyed in a really long time."
Pleased with his sincerity, Cana relented with a small smile and decided to give him an inch.
"Do you... do you want to tell the waitress?" She said with a cheeky grin.
Loke jumped up on his chair.
"Uh, if I could have everyone's attention! Real quick, if you could, uh..." he turned to the waiters who were still serving patrons and diners who all but ignored the honey blonde. "Hey, guys, call a time-out to whatever-whatever- whatever that thing is. Okay... great. Listen, I am having sex with this woman right here! You want to stand up?"
"No."
"Okay, you don't want to...? All right, great. I'm enjoying myself im-immensely! Uh, it's, you know, just a physical thing, but I am definitely, for real having sex with this girl right here... to completion. PARKOUR! HIT IT! YEAH!" He finished his celebration by performing parkour along the diner walls. Cana could only smile in amusement.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
There was no answer to the bedroom door, but Lucy decided to enter the room anyway.
"Hey Nat," she greeted mildly. She met her pinkette friend laying on his bed sideways, facing away from the door, scrolling mindlessly through his phone. Lucy could practically sense his despair from where she stood. Regardless, she proceeded forward with her gift in hand anyway. "I got you a plant."
Natsu turned and glared at her. "Is this supposed to be some kinda joke?"
She walked over to his bed and sat down next to him. He could feel the bed dip next to him under her weight.
"No I'm serious," she nudged his arm. "C'mon, get up."
Once he was sitting upright in his bed, Lucy passed him the potted plant of a young green bud. He looked at the plant she gave him miserably, still thinking this was partly some cruel joke.
"I don't want it, Luce... I'll just kill it."
"Oh I know," she laughed wryly, rubbing his shoulder. "You're a plant killer. And I write songs. And life sucks sometimes. But that's okay."
He sighed as he looked at his new plant, then at the blonde who gave it to him. Shoulder to shoulder, he stared into the chocolate drops she had for eyes getting somewhat lost in them. After a moment he felt a smile tugging at his lips looking at the new plant once more.
So it's time we all make a change
Find somewhere else for our loose change
"The song is called Let Me Lift You Up With My Robot Arm?" Loke asked raising an eyebrow at the other blonde.
"Yeah," she answered.
At some point, the four roommates gathered in the living room on the couch to watch a new video of Lucy singing with her student posted on YouTube. This one, not quite as viral as Sad Sparrow, but garnering a not so modest 1,200 views within the few short hours it was posted.
"It's catchy," Gajeel acknowledge as they watched his laptop. "I mean, the title is flawed, there's no question about that. But you are kicking ass with these comments. Look at this:"
"This teacher is muy caliente."
"Hot, hot, hot," Lucy said fanning herself.
"I'd like to grade her on a curve."
"Heck yeah," Lucy pumped her fist in the air.
"Finally, entertainment that doesn't resort to salty language."
"Finally," Lucy echoed.
After a brief pause by the former football star, he turned to his roommate. "Luce... these commenters are all you, aren't they?"
"Yes," She answered without hesitation. "Yes, they are."
My robot arm.
My robot arm.
My robot arm.
Hey everyone! Big thanks to everyone who followed/favorited after last chapter, and big thanks to rao hyuga 18, queenuly14, Fluffy-Experiment, AJ and Copperreign (x3) for the continuous feedback!
Until next time: Lean on Me
Slight spoiler, next chapter will be a little more serious, but I'm looking forward to it!