"You want us to fake date?," Gladion asks incredulously as he carefully eyes the shorter girl across his way. She was the one who pulled him aside, envelope in hand, a faint blush on her cheeks as she requested a favor from him. His silence, however, was nerve inducing as she started to bite her lower lip, her eyes not meeting his as her head slowly nods in response.
A confirmation.
"What for?"
A frustrated sigh escapes Moon as her hand plants itself on the picnic table that lied between them. "What for? Gladion, you sent this letter-"
"I did no such thing" Gladion interjects only to see Moon rolling her eyes. "Well, regardless of how this happened," Moon shakes the addressed envelope, "I have it. You kissed me yesterday and now I have an ex-boyfriend I need to make jealous."
As soon as Moon finishes her sentence however, the apprehension on Gladion's face is replaced with something much more cunning. A glint in his eye, a smirk, and a tilt of the head all created a fatal combination that causes her stomach to flip involuntarily, and soon the whole look is attached to a teasing tone in his voice as he whispers:
"So you're using me to get back at Sun?"
"NO!" Moon yells almost instinctively, but when Gladion quirks an eyebrow, silently prompting her to explain how it wasn't using him. She crosses her arms across her chest in defense instead. "At least I have the gall to ask for a favor instead of just kissing; unlike somebody here."
Gladion lets out a small chuckle at Moon's puffed out cheeks, before letting a more genuine smile make its way to his features. "Fine. I'll agree to your little sham," he begins, Moon's face now visibly relaxing, "on a few conditions."
"Conditions?" Moon asks mockingly as he drops his notebook on the table, ignoring Moon's tone. "If I'm going to be your fake boyfriend, which is solely to mess with Sun," Gladion begins whilst scribbling down his rule, "we can't kiss."
"Funny suggestion coming from you," Moon says with a scoff before reaching over, snatching the pen from the blonde's hand, and sitting down on the bench. "Fine then, rule number two. No one can know this is fake. It'll look bad for you, it'll look bad for me. This is high school, none of us can afford to look bad."
Gladion leans his cheek into his elbow-propped hand, quickly murmuring "oh trust me, it'll look worse for you than me. I'm invisible in this population," but the quiet confession isn't heard by Moon as she turns the notebook over again. A third rule now graced the bottom of the page
'No falling in love'
Gladion looks at her in complete disbelief as she draws signature lines at the bottom. His look, however, doesn't go unnoticed as she simply asks "what?" without glancing up from the page. "I figured we needed to lay that out in the open and it's like I said it before. This, us. Is never going to happen."
Gladion simply nods as he adds his simple signature next to her curly one, now establishing that he and the girl he kissed back in 7th grade during spin the bottle, were now involved in the lie of the century.
"Why'd you do it anyways?"
Her voice interrupting his train of thought. "Do what? Agree to this?"
Moon's makes a small noise, suggesting that he understood half of her question. "Well, yes there is this too. But I was specifically wondering about you kissing me yesterday. Why?"
Gladion feels the heat rise, the embarrassment settling in as he brings a hand over his face in shame. "Those letters...you're not the only one who received one…"
The grimace on his face was undeniable as Moon repeatedly opens and closes her mouth before shaking her head. "Now I didn't know I was involved with a player, and I thought i was special" Moon jokes only to get a gruff response from the boy. Gladion scowls as he snatches away the notebook, cramming it into his backpack with no grace. His awareness of his past love-sick debacles now haunting him as the girl across from him beams a sly smile.
"Are you going to break my heart, Gladion?"
And for a second, a small, tiny, slight second, he feels that her question is misdirected.
"I don't plan on it. Rule three. Remember?"