Disclaimer: I don't wanna own it. The manga, heck yes, but the show can belong to Satoshi Tajiri. Have fun with that, you lucky, lucky man. I don't own the quotes from "The Glass Menagerie" either.
If anyone comments about how May's eevee has evolved into a glaceon, I am aware of this fact. This is before Sinnoh, which means her eevee hasn't touched the stone. You can squish an ice cube to its head but I've got a feeling it still won't evolve, so…let's get to it, shall we? I hope you enjoy, and if you do, well, the button's down there.
May had never thought she was anything special, but she guessed she had never put much thought into thinking she was special. After all, what was the point of glancing in the mirror and giving herself a five or a one or a ten if she didn't have anyone else to compare it to? If she drank orange juice all her life, and it turned out she would have liked apple juice better, it didn't make a difference because she never had it. That was the best she could do to explain it. She liked to dress up and put on makeup, but she simply couldn't grasp the difference between pretty and ugly and attractive or not and all the thousands of things that could draw another to her personality. She just didn't get it.
But she did get second and first place. That was clear as day and night to her. That was the difference between a ribbon and no ribbon, feeling like a champ and feeling like a chump, it was perfectly clear what the difference between those were. She was feeling it right then. She hadn't lost to Drew or Harley or Soledad, if only! She had lost to some no name first timer, a kid who had switched from battles to contests (for that one time only, the girl had flushed and tried to give the ribbon to May afterwards, claiming that she only won because of her longer experience with pokémon) and blew everyone away. She had a salamence that almost bit Eevee's head off. May considered this grossly unfair, but she lived with it and moved forward. It wasn't as if it could get any worse.
"Lost to a first timer, did you May?"
Crap. Not that she would ever say the word, but it came unbidden to her mind. She blamed it on the muggy weather, making her sweat and causing clothes to cling to her with a nasty kind of feeling. The day was warm enough so the bench she sat on scalded her legs and cause eevee to settle in her lap after burning its feet on the pavement. This only made them both hotter, but there was nothing to do about that but pet the eevee and hope they would faint from heat stroke.
"I'm not in the mood, Drew," She murmured, taking special care to scratch the normal type in a special spot below her chin. "Can't you go away? I'm sure you saw the performance, saw my performance." Her hand clenched in eevee's fur. "It sucked."
He sighed, sitting on the bench next to her. "You're not making this any fun."
"I lost to a first timer, Drew!" She cried, eevee coming up to nestle into her neck. "I'm sorry eevee. That wasn't fair to you."
He stretched his arms across the bench and lolled his head back with a moan. "Take all the fun out of it. I came here to make fun of you, can't you brighten up. Get angry. Throw one of your hissy fits. I could use a laugh."
"So could I," She responded bitterly. Her big blue eyes turned to him, desperate for an answer and hurt from the loss. "Drew, you know a lot about contests. What'd I do wrong? Maybe I didn't give eevee enough pokeblocks before I went on, or I pushed eevee too hard with training before hand. That was probably wrong, but it was such a big contest and I was sure I would need the extra effort. I probably should have used a pokémon I'm more used to using, or a strong pokémon. I should have used my starter. He would have been able to handle the whole thing without a problem. He could have handled a salamence."
Drew raised his hand to rub his temples, sighing. "No, he couldn't have. Blaziken's a strong pokémon, but not strong enough to beat a salamence like that. I was talking to the girl afterward, her name was Kara. She beat the Elite Four, you know. She's beat the Champion too. It didn't occur to her until it was too late to pull out that she should've used a weaker pokémon. She thought it was just the appeal, May, she didn't know there was battling. If you'll notice, she barely beat you since your KO did nothing for her technique. She actually got deducted for it."
"It figures it was me!" She moaned. "I knew it! I just knew something bad had to happen! I won three contests in a row, Drew, something that good couldn't possibly happen to me. I'm just a bad luck magnet and Eevee had to suffer for it! I'm sorry, Eevee." She turned her attention to the pokémon, rather confused by her trainer's panic. "I won't make you do anything like that ever again. I should have known you were outmatched and let you go. I should just release you, because all this stupid stuff always happens to me. I blame Kara. She shouldn't have done something that mean, and she didn't even want it."
"People are not so dreadful when you know them. That's what you have to remember! And everybody has problems, not just you, but practically everybody has got some problems. You thinking of yourself as having the only problems, as being the only one who is disappointed. But just look around you and you will see lots of people as disappointed as you are," Drew quoted brightly, glancing at her only to receive a baffled glare. "What, nothing?"
"What are you talking about?" She asked accusingly, holding Eevee close and looking rather peeved at the grass headed boy.
"Don't get the reference at all? Really?" He inquired, raising an eyebrow. She continued to look confused, so he smiled to himself and let his head tangle over the bench with a happy sigh. "Then this conversation is going to be pretty fun. My hopes have been reignited. Thank you Powers That Be, I'll consider treating others nicer for this."
"What's wrong with you?" She asked hotly. "I just lost and you're acting like a dork. If you're going to be a jerk about this whole thing, just go away. I shouldn't have to suffer even more because you're insulting all the time. Insulting, and cold. Not to mention annoying. I should never have left Ash. There's contests in his region, you know. I should have kept following him. Wouldn't have met up with you."
"Ah, but you wouldn't have any fun if you didn't know me," Drew pointed out.
"Humph, have you seen the adventures Ash, Brock and I got into? I would have plenty of fun, Drew, more than I can ever have here. He saved the world again, in case you're curious. The Legendaries of Time and Space tried to destroy the world, but he's a hero, so he didn't let them. They had to play this giant musical clock tower, and I don't really get what happened but I assure you, it was way more fun than losing here today."
"But I'm adorable," He argued, drumming his fingers against the hot wood. His finger tapped a bit of metal, probably a nail, and he yanked away instinctively. This only resulted in a splinter and him sucking on the pointer finger with a wince, making a low growling noise under his breath. "Do you have a needle with you."
"No," She muttered, grabbing at his wrist and wiping his finger on his shirt. She held it to her face for scrutiny, then tossed it back with a sigh. "I've got tweezers though. They're somewhere in my bag but I don't feel like looking for them. I feel down because I lost. Cheer me up and maybe I'll dig through my bag and pull out the wood before it gets infected."
Drew wrinkled his nose and eyed the splinter. "This is a public bench. I just realized it, but it's a public bench. I could get anything from the flu to and STD from this. There's a huge strep throat epidemic rolling through. I could get that and I'm allergic to some of the antibiotics they treat you with. Pull the splinter out so I don't die, May. You'll feel guilty at my funeral if you don't."
She scoffed. "I'm not going to a jerk's funeral."
He shrugged. "You don't have to, it'll be on every channel. Aside from the fact that if I have this splinter, May, I'm sad. If I'm sad, I can't cheer you up. If you don't pull out the splinter we're both just going to be miserable and then you might have to kill yourself when I die because you were so in love with me and never got around to mentioning it. Don't do it, May. I've always known your heart beats for me."
"You're so self centered."
"Yes, I am," He agreed, extending his arm to her. "Doesn't change the fact that I'm a dying man you're in love with. Take out the splinter and I just might have a solution to all your problems. You're always begging for solutions, so you better take the chance to snatch up this one. It's one of my best ideas yet."
She sorted through her bag, Eevee precariously balanced on the very edge of her lap. "It better be worth it. I'd never leave you to die but I'm pretty sure you can't get strep through a splinter unless you eat the splinter right after someone coughed on it. Even then you probably wouldn't get it. Max never has, and I've gotten it around him a million times."
"Really?" He asked, watching her pick at his splinter gently. "Who'd you get it from?"
"My dad. He always got it from challengers. He got way to close to them sometimes. Mom kept trying to warn him to stay away if they were coughing and she was sure they wouldn't be offended, but Dad went in their faces every time. He's nice like that, a real good guy. He sort of reminds me of Ash. And the splinter broke off in your finger. Fantastic."
"It's because I'm thick skinned," Drew explained. "So, if Ash is like your Dad and every girl wants to marry her father-"
"No," She said quickly, glaring up at him. "Ash and Max are more alike than my father and Ash will ever be. Dating Ash would be like dating my little brother, and the thought of that makes me nauseous. I don't go for incest." She turned her attention back to his finger. "I hope I'm not hurting you. I'm trying to be careful."
"You're much too kind to a self centered jerk."
She gave a flicker of a smile before her face faded back to its melancholy tone. "You bring out the emotion in me. You can get me mad or sad or anything with a few words. Not that it's hard to do a lot of that, but you're better at it than most. Max is the only other person that can say a word and throw me into a fit. Well, that's a lie. My dad is better at that than Max. I guess it's because his opinion of me just matters so much. I've lived my whole life trying to fill his shoes. Everyone thinks of me as a gym leader's kid first. Too many people hope I'll take over the gym, they forget about Max. I wish they wouldn't. He'll be a better leader than me."
"So, if I'm like your father-ow!" He snatched his hand away and sucked on it for a moment, pulling it out to remark. "You did that on purpose."
"No, I got the splinter," She smiled sweetly, holding it up for him to see. "Voila. It was a little deeper than I thought so you might bleed, but I did my best." The smile turned sour at that. "Brock would have been able to do it better. He handled all the medical stuff in the group, the cooking to. It was better than anything I could make. It really made me feel…not as feminine as I should be. Probably ridiculous to think but…can't help it."
"Oh, Great Power, whatever you may be, please strike me down now and end the angst party. I hate angst. It's too British for me."
"You're not funny!" May snapped. "I have a serious problem! Drew, I'm not good at anything and you just have to help me! Tell me what's wrong with me or help me fix my mistakes but you can't just leave me hanging like you're doing! I'm desperate for some kind of help, and if you'd take a moment to just…to just explain what I'm doing wrong I bet I could try and do it better even if I'm not as good as anyone else. I might not get it but-"
He put his wounded finger over her mouth, and quoted calmly: "I happened to notice you had this inferiority complex that keeps you from feeling comfortable with people. Somebody needs to build your confidence up and make you proud instead of shy and turning away and – blushing. Somebody – ought to – kiss you, Laura!"
"Laura?" She demanded with surprise. "My name's-"
But he quieted her with a swift kiss, barely a second before pulling away. With a sincere sort of smile, he chuckled, "Well, someone had to, or you'd never keep up those contests. If you don't stay in the contests you'll turn to battling and then Max will be out of a job. Can't do that to him. He told me all about what's in your past, and I have to say, you were a very, very boring little girl. Thank goodness you always have someone fun around."
He did a boy scout salute and strode off, chuckling. "See you in the next town, May. I'll bring the blue roses if you'll blow out the candles!"
And though she had never seen the play, staring after him with her hand over her lips, she couldn't suppress the urge to waltz around her room and shatter a glass unicorn on the floor. But the urge faded and she picked up eevee to walk a separate way. Most girls were brave enough or desperate enough to chase after him, tackle him into the dirt and shower him with kisses for his corny, half assed confession, but not May. Oh, certainly not May, because, when it came to Drew…
May would always find herself acting the blue rose.