It wasn't that Kaen was avoiding her. He was a Redfox for Mavis's sake. Redfox weren't scared to talk to their crushes.

Kaen Redfox wasn't hiding in the closet because he was avoiding Storm Fullbuster.

In fact, he wasn't hiding at all. It was just that as he was walking in the guild hallway, he remembered that he left his coat in said closet in said guild hallway last winter and thought that he might as well get it back now.

His presence in the small space had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Storm had turned into said hallway at the exact time he jumped head first in the first room he saw.

Seriously, he really just wanted the coat. He had been looking all over for it.

Kaen believed his exit from the hallway had been very normal looking and not at all suspicious. He was actually chuckling, praising his reflexes and trying to ignore the sharp pain in his knees, the real victims in this situation, when the door he had just closed very quietly opened suddenly. On the other side, a concerned Storm stood.

In that moment, Kaen closed his eyes, prayed very hard that twin telepathy was real and sent a message to his sister to open the earth and let it swallow him.

He opened his eyes. He wasn't 6 feet deep. Storm was still in front of him, looking at him with an expression between amusement and worry.

As dreadful as the whole thing was, he wasn't surprised that his only thought at that point was that he really liked when she let her hair down and that she had very pretty eyes.

"Storm ! What are you doing down here?" he asked with all smiles, painfully aware that he was on all fours. "Are you looking for your coat too?"

The worried frown did not leave the dark-haired girl's face. "I heard something fall in here and the door closed very loudly" she said, holding out a hand to him.

He got up with her help, still trying to act nonchalantly.

She dusted something off his hair. "Are you okay?" She asked.

He laughed and winced at the horrid noise, ignoring how her being so close to him was making him blush. God, was it that hard to act normally? "Yeah, yeah, just looking for my raincoat to go back home, heard it was going to rain later." he explained and then nearly fell to all fours again when the words left his lips.

Who lies to the human rain-detector and says that it's going to rain later ?

"Rain ?" She paused for a moment, looking up as if she could see the sky through the wooden roof. "I don't think it's going to rain today."

Yeah, he figured.

"Anyways, Atlas and I are going home too." She continued. " Want to walk with us? I'll keep the rain off of us even if you don't find your coat."

Kaen sighed. Fucking Atlas. Of course, the only time blondie boy would go somewhere using his own two feet and not by flight with Haya is when he was pretending to be a gentleman. Walking girls home and what not. He was such a fucking loser.

No way, he was going to third wheel and watch his worst enemy flirt with his crush right in his face. So he did what anyone would do in that situation.

"My mom will kill me if I don't find the coat though." he said weakly. " You just go ahead, I'll go home later."

Point to Redfox! Girls love Mama's boys.

She chuckled. "Are you sure ?I can wait for you. I don't want you to get wet and catch a cold."

Kaen found it endearing that she insisted with the rain thing when they both knew that it was a lie. It was the middle of summer in Magnolia, the closest thing to rain that could happen is Blue Pegasus's boat leaking magic gas while in flight.

He nodded and shooed her away. "Certain! Now go so I can scream in pain. My knee really hurt." He said, earning a laugh from her.

And he did just that when he lost sight of her when she went down the stairs, still laughing.

Yeah, that was embarrassing.

"Oh baby brother, that was so embarrassing." Kiera confirmed to him, seemingly appearing from nowhere and taking the place previously occupied by Storm. "Even Uncle Natsu would have handled this better."

He scowled at her, not even bothering to ask if she heard everything. "You couldn't bury me when I asked, don't talk to me."

She frowned at him. "What ?"

"Whatever Kiera!" He said before finally getting out of the forsaken closet and walking to the stairs.