User blog comment:Davide Yamazaki/Top 5 Cutest Ships in Fairy Tail!/@comment-4449950-20160508040724/@comment-7418318-20160509174244

Sure he outright refuses at that moment, with an answer that is most likely a rejection and by any sane person would be seen as such... but is still open enough to interpretation to allow some doubt.

And then he sees that she didn't get the message, he just let's her ramble on instead of giving a devinite and impossible to misinterprete statement. Either because he's too much of a jerk to care, too much of a softy to "hurt her feelings" (though it'll spare her pain in the long run) or is too indecisive to fully slamm the door shut for good and intentionally made his first statement interpretable for exactly that reason.

I don't know which of the three it is, but either way he's a jerk.

Sure with Juvia being so delusional it might not work, but at least he could have tried...