First of all, let me say that this work is really special to me. I'm really, really proud of it.

The title of chapter one is a lyric from Next of Kin by Alvvays.

You can read all about my inspiration in the long, rambly note I have at the end of this fic.

My characterization of Hoenn characters is always a combination of their personalities from Emerald and their personalities from ORAS.

Enjoy!

Once you love someone—once you truly love someone, not just think that you do—, you can never stop. That's what Maxie learns.

Maxie, along with everyone, is quite possibly about to die, and he's still in love. It's raining so hard that the drops of water hurt when they touch bare skin, bruising, and Maxie feels slimy and slippery, wetter than he has ever felt before. Anyone who knows Maxie would know that he hates being wet, but all that he can think about now, as the ground in Sootopolis City is becoming lost in water, as the waves are coming in so strong that he keeps losing his balance, is a scene from ten, fifteen years ago.

All Maxie can think about is when he and Archie had gotten caught out in the rain one day when they were so young, and he had hissed and prickled like a sopping Delcatty while Archie had laughed and kissed him and spun him around. Maxie suddenly feels so dizzy, so destroyed and defeated by his situation that he doesn't feel like himself anymore.

Even though that memory won't save him or anyone, even though the water is rising, aggressive and angry, it's all that Maxie can think about. In normal circumstances, he'd curse nostalgia and burn the ashes, but he has developed a nearly spiteful apathy in this heavy rain; he doesn't care about locking this softer, barer version of himself away from the world. He loves Archie, always has, and no amount of grinding at his skin with sandpaper has changed this.

That doesn't mean that it doesn't piss Maxie off that he feels like this, though. Because it does. He shouldn't love someone who is the reason why the Earth is drowning. Really, truly, he had tried to shed his love for Archie and become anew years ago, but it hadn't worked; he and Archie are stuck together, entwined forever, whether they want to be or not. He can't describe how he feels whenever he sees Archie: this mixture of that's the person I love and you destroyed me; you hurt me; it's confusing and exhausting, and Maxie is…tired of it.

Archie, the curse that has invaded Maxie's thoughts in a time where he can hardly function over his internal sirens and alarms, is standing too far away and too close all at once. He has his arms wrapped around his midsection, and he looks distraught almost to the point of being ill. Maxie stares at him for a few moments, frozen in a moment of disbelief in reality and feeling, suddenly, like he's 22 again. 22 and afraid, open, idealistic, and naïve. 22, unsteady and unsure. He knows, then, that he has made enough mistakes in his life not to reach out to the person he loves more than anyone else in what might just be their dying moments.

Though he doesn't really have a plan when he starts talking, Maxie really doesn't expect or want the first words that come out of his mouth to be, "Why couldn't you have just stopped, Archie?"

Archie whips his head over in Maxie's direction, and the bystanders standing by the Cave of Origin shrink away, quite aware that this is entirely between Archie and Maxie. "How dare you say that to me?" Archie snarls, "You know just as well as I do that you would have done something similar if you had had the chance!" Archie turns around as he speaks, the movements making a watery whoosh. Maxie had expected him to look angry, but he mostly just looks miserable and hurt.

"No, I…" Do you remember kissing me in the rain, Archie? "that's not what I wanted to say." Archie quirks an eyebrow. "We're…" the world is so wet, but Maxie's mouth feels so dry, "...damn it, Archie! We might be about to die, and I still love you, you impossible, incorrigible…" Archie looks taken aback, eyes wide and posture loosened, "and…I just wanted you to know that I still do…."

Archie pulls Maxie into a hug, and suddenly, Maxie realizes that he's shivering. He can't quite tell if he's warmer in Archie's arms because he mostly just feels numb, but he does feel more mentally sound. "Fuck you, Maxie; I love you too," Archie tells him.

"My shoes are soaking wet, and it's all your fault," Maxie says in response, even though almost all of him is wet, and Archie laughs.

"Sorry about that, Max." Archie kisses him lightly on the forehead, tilting his head upward. "Hey, do you remember the time that we got caught out in the rain and you complained for weeks about that one pair of shoes you had that got ruined?"

"I forgot about my shoes. I remember you laughing at my dramatics, though. I was just thinking about that before we started talking."

"I was too." Archie's smile is gentle and revealing, and Maxie's grip on him tightens.

Maybe this is why, Maxie thinks, maybe we're on the same wavelength. Two gamma rays, taking and taking and taking.

In one moment, Maxie's feet are touching the ground and he is enclosed in Archie's embrace, and in the next, the waves have taken him. He flails his arms around, trying not to panic but not particularly succeeding. Someone grabs onto him, inadvertently pushing him down a bit, and he gasps out of reflex, sending water into his mouth and down his throat. He kicks his legs and coughs and hacks, thinking, desperately, I'm not a good enough swimmer for this; I'm going to die.

"Maxie, Maxie, you're okay. You're okay," Archie says, his voice giving Maxie's mind something to latch onto as he thrashes and coughs and panics. Maxie's vision is blurred by the tears brought on by his coughing and Archie's face is streaked with water, but he thinks that he can see tears streaming down it. Maxie coughs some more until he feels like he can breathe again; Archie has one arm around him, trying to keep him close.

Without a word or any sort of preamble, Archie and Maxie slot their mouths together. It tastes like salt water, which is terrible, and water splashes into and around their noses and linked lips, but Maxie doesn't care.

For a moment, all that envelops Maxie's senses is the sound of the roll and crash of waves, the sound of breath against skin, the press of cold, wet lips against each other, and the feeling of being completely, utterly soaked. He wishes that he could push away all of his thoughts and worries and even this catastrophic torrent with just these engrossing sensations. He wishes that he could put all of these sensations up as a barrier and skip past all of the stages of grief.

Maxie and Archie know, if the rain stops, if May succeeds, they will never let each other go again. Too many years of their lives have been ruined for ridiculous, terrible reasons; they will get them back.

Archie maneuvers them over to the closest rock wall of Sootopolis City so that they can lean against it. Someone somewhere is crying, but Archie and Maxie ignore it.

Maxie can see, from the little spot that he and Archie have made for themselves in the deluge, that the citizens of Sootopolis are climbing onto their roofs, some crying and mourning surely-lost possessions. "This is my fault," Archie says softly, and Maxie knows now that he really is crying. He doesn't speak. He doesn't have anything to say about this whole thing, but then, does anyone really?

The water is filthy and ugly now, having picked up miscellaneous objects from all around Sootopolis City. When it was confined to where it had been before this storm, it had been rather clear; it was not unusual to be able to see water type Pokémon swimming around beneath the surface. Now, the water is a sickly brownish color; it looks malevolent.

The rain is something in itself, too. Maxie thinks that he has never seen raindrops this large or that fall as frequently or with as much force. They slam into the water like heavy objects—dense, metal objects—falling from great heights, making the surface of the water ripple constantly, never having even a moment to breathe and smooth itself out.

(Dully, Maxie remembers some equation about force or inertia or possibly both; he would remember, could write the equation down and solve it given some pieces of information, if his mind wasn't racing with everything else. And wouldn't that be nice, if this situation could be solved with equations?)

It's then, though, that the rain stops, and Maxie and Archie look up and around with wide-eyes, blinking constantly as if they're hallucinating and seeing and sensing things that are not real.

"Maxie!"

"Archie!"

Together, "She did it!"

And May did: the rain has stopped falling. But, that doesn't mean that everything is magically reversed like some small, subconscious part of Maxie had foolishly thought. Sootopolis—and many other places, too, Maxie suspects—is flooded, and he and Archie still have these lifeless, disillusioned looks in their eyes that they didn't have when they were young and just learning what it meant to be in love.

They kiss again, and they don't stop until they hear something splash above the surface of the water. It's May returning from her venture, and for a moment, no one knows what to say. She looks stricken and somewhat alien, her Aqua Suit still on and her face partly concealed. Then, her eyes fall on Archie and Maxie, pressed so close together, and she smiles just the slightest bit, but it's crooked and wrong, and Maxie feels guilty for swatting the innocence out of this child, even though this whole mess is Archie's fault more than his.

May opens her mouth to say something, but then, everyone seems to say, "May!" at the same time, and she is surrounded. She would have been bombarded by hugs, but such things are difficult to achieve in water, as Maxie now has personal experience of.

"I…what? Is everything…is everyone okay?" May asks, looking all around; her eyes focus and stall on a child around the age of four crying on a roof.

Everyone gives her space to breathe then, as she looks rather close to tears. May pulls a Pokéball out of her sodden bag and balances it on her palm, letting everyone see. Maxie and Archie know immediately which Pokémon is inside.

"You caught Kyogre?" Archie asks, astonished, and May nods, looking at the Pokéball like it's horrible and disgusting.

"If I hadn't…if I hadn't tried to catch Kyogre…the water wouldn't be this high," May stares at her hand for a while, her palm loose as if she wants the Pokéball to slip out and sink to the bottom of the ocean so that she never has to look at it or the creature inside ever again.

"May, no, you saved everyone," Archie says. "This is my fault."

"But I could have—!" May shouts, "I could have done more! If I hadn't…." Archie pulls May into a tight, crushing, and apologetic hug, water, Aqua Suit, and all.

"I'm really sorry, May." May makes a hum of acknowledgement, still looking off into the distance, thinking. "Thank you so much for…for everything," Archie says before ending the hug.

The sun is shining bright now, and the sunlight is reflecting off of all of the water in Sootopolis, making it look dreamlike and ethereal. From a broader perspective, though, in which one considers how much water there is and why it's all there, the scene looks eerie and perturbing. Sootopolis City in these moments feels like some sort of median between peaceful and dead, which is so harsh of a juxtaposition from just a few minutes ago. Several people take a few moments to stop and look across the city, thoughtful and maybe, also, afraid.

Archie and Maxie swim to the roof of a house together, connecting their hands loosely once they're there as if they're wary of the future. Their future. Calls are being made to check on the state of the rest of the world, and Steven Stone seems to be trying to organize some mass movement of hospitalization and flood damage checking or something similar. There are too many things on his mind, too many things to do. Maxie thinks that he hears something about a plan to evaporate some of the water with the help of Pokémon who know moves like Sunny Day. Beside him, Archie rubs at his eyelids with his fists.

May swims over to the roof that Archie and Maxie have unofficially claimed as their own and sits as well, first taking off her Aqua Suit. Her hair and clothes are ruffled and wrinkled, which adds to the overall image she has of being exhausted and shaken. She has come over to this particular roof because she needs some space and it's the only one that's quiet. Archie and Maxie don't mind her company; they just want her to feel better.

After a few minutes, Archie gently and wordlessly kisses Maxie's cheek. Maxie snuggles in closer to him, and they both know what it means: a new start, I'm never letting you go again.

A Magikarp peeks above the surface of the water, and everything is returning to normal.