AN: I decided to retool the story I was working on into something more fluffy. Sorry if you enjoyed the chapters I posted before, but I can do better. Please review if you like this.

The sand felt good between her toes. Warm, soft, squidgy. It was hard to deny the appeal of the sand that made up the beaches of Undella Bay. It was a tourist hotspot for a reason, after all, and Dawn doubted that tourists came to see the Basculin thrashing about in the water.

Then she remembered the new Marine Tube that had been constructed last year and shook her head. Dawn had been to see it last week. It was all very technically impressive, but the water had been empty apart from the vicious striped Pokémon, and the weight of all the water over her head had made her feel claustrophobic. Perhaps some tourists did come to see the Basculin, but Dawn was certainly not going to be one of them.

Not that there were many tourists around right now, or Basculin for that matter. It was calm, clear, and warm; a day in late May that was altogether the best sort of day one could expect a few weeks before summertime - and the associated decamping of tourists - began. Admittedly being shacked up in a private villa meant that the gaggle of tourists that took to the beaches and streets of Undella Town would not be a problem in any case, but Dawn was appreciating the peace and quiet afforded by not having holidaymakers' voices drift up to her on the wind.

Dawn looked over at the town, masked by gentle undulations of moderate spring heat over the intervening mile of beach. Nothing of interest there. She yawned lazily.

Sunbathing was hard work.

Her mind wandered, as her toes continued kneading the sand at the end of the blanket.

Unova was nice, if very different to Sinnoh. Warmer, bigger, more industrialised, and with a plethora of Pokémon Dawn could never have imagined even existed; it would all be a bit overwhelming if not for the fact that she had only seen cursory parts of the area so far. Dawn hoped to explore it one day. She wasn't sure that she was ready for another adventure just yet, though.

After all, she'd just finished one that had proved utterly exhausting.

Dawn counted in her head. Two weeks and four - no, five - days ago she had been battling for her place as the official Sinnoh Pokémon League Champion. After a long and difficult battle which she had been close to winning, she had been defeated. Dawn didn't feel too bad about it losing the match, though; she had won in other ways. Most notably, she considered the way that the battle had catalysed the start of a relationship with that very Champion a particular victory.

"Ow." Dawn opened one eye and squinted up at her transgressor. "I was just thinking about you."

"Liar." Cynthia smiled. "I'm surprised I got any reaction. You looked deep in thought. Lost to the world."

"Mmmm." Dawn made a non-committal noise. "It's easy to get distracted when you have kind and generous girls waiting on you hand and foot, providing you with attention and villas to sunbathe in front of and five-star cooking. And it's easy to weather kicks from someone who is wearing foam sandals."

Cynthia frowned and fumbled, pulling a water bottle from the pocket of her shorts, then tossed it to where Dawn was lying on the sand.

"Catch."

"Thank you." Dawn unscrewed the cap and drank a little.

"So you were just thinking about me, huh?"

"No," Dawn admitted, "I was thinking about us. And how happy I am that it all worked out this way."

The blonde girl lay down next to Dawn on the blanket. "Me too."

"The past few weeks I've been pinching myself. I expect to wake up at any moment and find myself lying prone at the summit of Mt Coronet, hallucinating as I gasp out my last breaths before succumbing to hypothermia or the machinations of more power-crazed ne'er-do-wells."

Cynthia took Dawn's hand. "Feel real enough to you?"

Dawn smiled happily. "Yeah. I picked well, you know. I don't normally fall in love with people who own fewer than five international properties."

Cynthia squeezed her girlfriend's hand in amusement. "We don't get to choose who we fall in love with," she began, "but I don't think it worked out badly for us at all."

Dawn squeezed back. "All those times you wanted to meet me to see how I was getting on, I'm surprised you didn't have an ulterior motive."

Cynthia laughed. "No, I really did want to mentor you and help you through your journey as a Trainer. But once it became apparent that you didn't really need my help, I wanted to see you because I wanted to be your friend." She paused and moved to whisper in Dawn's ear. "I think it worked."

"It definitely did." Dawn shuffled into the taller girl's chest and made herself comfortable. "Though I don't think friends one day end up having desperate, tearful sex in the recesses of the Sinnoh Pokémon League building." She paused and smiled as her face went a bit pinker than before. "But I'm happy that we did..."

Cynthia blushed as she remembered. The aftermath of their Championship match had released a lot of pent-up feelings, and whilst a crying and consolatory mutual love confession was the sort of thing you expected to find in clichéd fictional romances, Cynthia supposed it was not the worst way to begin a relationship. Nor was rushing from her Champion's battlefield to find a place for passionate and conciliatory make-up sex. It was memorable, at least.

"Well, you know what they say," Cynthia whispered as she took a hand up to touch Dawn's shoulder, "practice makes perfect." Her voice dropped coyly. "I think we've been getting plenty."

Dawn could not disagree. They had cancelled quite a number of their planned activities in the last week when things got the better of them. And honestly, having a double bed in their villa house was clearly a sign that some higher force wanted them to put it to use.

She rolled over and had some more of her water. "It must be something in this, you know."

"Then I shall remain eternally grateful that young girls like yourself drink so much of the stuff."

The bluenette smiled. They had talked about their age difference yesterday, deciding that it didn't really make a difference to themselves or other people. Dawn was sixteen-going-on-seventeen, and Cynthia twenty-two; whilst other people might - and probably would - disapprove in the future, the two girls were not going to let themselves care overly much about what other people thought. That didn't stop them teasing each other from time to time, though.

Dawn extricated herself from the cold, watery clutches of her drink. "Ahhh." She went back to ensconce herself in the warm shoulder and neck of her girl. "Mmmmm. So what do you want to do for the rest of the day?"

"I dunno," Cynthia responded, lazily raising her arm to check her watch. "It's 3pm. What do you feel like?"

"I feel like falling asleep in this warmth, next to you," Dawn mumbled. "Then later I am going to cook you and me dinner and you will tell me it is delicious. After that, when it is dark, we will go for a walk and watch those weird glowy Pokémon -"

"Frillish."

"- those weird glowy Frillish in the bay whilst holding hands. Then we will come back, fuck each other silly, and fall asleep tangled in each others' arms..."

Cynthia laughed lightly, moving her hand up to stroke Dawn's hair. She had been amazed in the last weeks to discover that the deceptively cute, blue-haired girl could come out with the most forthright and lewd things without a trace of embarassment, when it suited her. A hidden romantic as well, apparently.

She was very glad that the lack of five international properties was not a deal-breaker for Dawn. Dawn, cute and lewd, and irreplaceable for all the world.

"That sounds just great." And Cynthia couldn't for the life of her fathom how her life had been happy before.