A/N: This is meant to take place in a modern-day type scene, and based of the games HGSS. I haven't written on FF since January and I've never written pokemon before so I hope this isn't too bad. A review would be really, really nice. :)
Pairing: Silver/Lyra (Soulsilver Shipping)
Disclaimer: I have to do this every time and honestly, would I be writing this if I owed it?
Murphy's Law
Silver hates the rain.
He hates the dampened ground, soft and slushy beneath his boots. He hates the way it's never the same –dry one moment and dousing him in buckets the next. He hates the way he's never prepared for this inconsistency and he curses the way it can always find the small junction between his neck and shirt collar, layering his back with cold lines. He absolutely hates the weight carried with his sodden jeans, and by no absolute measure can he stand the smell of a purely wet bus.
Normally, the ten or so minute wait for the "D" Bus to the greater region of Goldenrod City is a simple time where he can absentmindedly fumble through his sleek, black ipod and ignore the world around him. Heck- he'd even occasionally step on a flower or two if he were feeling worse than normal that day.
His ipod was lost.
All the flowers had already slunk to the ground with the pressure of the rain.
And, Silver swears, if that child beside him doesn't get over his fascination with the height of a puddle splash within the next two seconds, he's going to snap.
Restlessly swearing under his breath, Silver leans back over the curb and checks just once more if the small red bus is anywhere to be found. He gives it plenty of time (a whole three minutes) and there's still there is no large metallic savior bounding along the road. So he shuffles his feet in an attempt to try and kick out the small puddles that are forming in his socks and looks down at the kid.
He couldn't be more than six, Silver guesses, and judging by the sunny yellow rain coat and galoshes even redder than his hair, he's perfectly happy with that age. He can't guess how; when he was six all he ever wanted to be was seven. When he was seven all he ever wanted to be was eight, and when he was eight all he ever wanted to be was ruler of the world.
Stupid kid.
Silver suddenly finds himself shuddering with the premonition that someone is looking at him (again) and cranes his head up at what must be the kid's mother, because she's glaring at him. Funny, Silver hadn't even noticed he had been scowling. Snorting, he stuffs his hands from his jean pockets to his jacket's in pursuit of a warmer, dryer place, and turns his head away.
Eventually the bus does pull up to his stop and he marches in, drops his money in the slot, and searches the aisles for an empty seat. Everywhere is wet. But that's not a surprise. Half the people have shoved the day's newspaper onto their seats -but those are already soaked through- a couple of lucky ones have long enough rain coats to shelter themselves from the dampness of the seats, and then there's him. No umbrella, no raincoat, running shoes, and a few open seats beside some other guys like himself that everyone else has skillfully avoided so far.
Sighing and accepting his fate, Silver began his walk over to a seat beside a large man who looks as miserable as he feels, when he sees it. Three seats, two of them empty, close to the back, near a window, spacious, and –bless his luck- dry. Immediately walking towards them he sits down happily, face smug at his lucky find. After Silver's finally found a spot of the seat that doesn't include his legs freezing from his drenched pants, he notices the mother from the stop pushing her child to the back of the bus, and suddenly he is very aware of the one empty seat beside him. She ushers her child into the unoccupied blue plastic chair beside him and stands over her kid, clutching the railing for support.
It's at that precise moment he notices something about the mother. Not believing at first, Silver peers even more to the left of his periphery vision because that could not be a swell of her stomach, and she is most defiantly not in the early stages of pregnancy because that would cruel. Almost as if she was sensing his thoughts, the woman takes her second hand off the railing and holds it against what must be the infamous "baby bump", smiling when the little boy takes his hand and puts it on top of hers.
Silver knows that this must be a form of karma, so he grudgingly begins to stand up and –out of a very deep part of his heart, because ever since he lost his he's always had a bit of a weakness for mothers- is right about to offer up his seat, when he hears a soft voice of what must be coming from the other side of the kid.
"Do you want to sit here, ma'am?"
He looks over to see a small brunette quickly stand up and give her seat up to the woman (who is now smiling with a million-watts, this is her pregnancy benefit), to which the girl later finds that there is no room left for her anywhere else. Slowly scooting over to his end of the aisle she grabs the railing directly above his head and looks out the window, humming to herself.
Rolling his eyes at her pathetic excuse for vocals, Silver digs into his pocket in search for his ipod when it hits him for the second time that day: he lost his ipod. Well, great.
"Hey." He tries to get her attention.
"Hello?" No answer still.
"Hey, you!" She looks down at him with bright brown doe-eyes, "Hey, what?" Taken back at her response he gives her his routine scowl, "Could you stop singing? Other people can hear you."
She looks at him again like she doesn't quite understand what he's asking, and then her brows furrow, face serious.
"You're wet."
Silver grits his teeth, "Yes. I am." He says, "How very perceptive of you to notice."
She pouts and shakes her head, "You should've brought an umbrella or something," She begins, reciting this as if she was reading it straight off a cue-card, "the weather report clearly called for a ninety-four-percent chance of-" The girl cuts off when he directly looks away and ignores her.
"Hey."
He pretends not to notice at first, but she just won't stop. "Hey, you." It has not been his day and he does not need this… "Hellllooo?" She slurs and Silver finally looses the inch of sanity he had left and yells enough for the truck driver at the front to hear, enough for the kid in the stupid red galoshes to curl up to his mother, and enough to get glares from all the other wet people on the bus,
"What? What do you want? I am tired, I am fed up, and I am wet-" He spits this word with particular disdain, "So why should I listen to you?"
Her mouth hangs open a bit at his out-burst but she doesn't get a chance to answer because the bus driver pulls up at the sidewalk, and tells them both to leave; they're causing a commotion and they should at the very least mind their manners for the (pregnant) mother and child that they're directly beside. So, being shoved right back into the rain that had not slowed down in the slightest from before, Silver put his hands to his temples and counted to ten very slowly.
One, for the lost ipod.
Two, for the lack of stomp-able flowers.
Three, for the rain.
Four, for the kid in bright red galoshes.
Five, for the mother.
Six, for the pregnant mother.
Seven, for the lack of dry seats.
Eight, for the song that girl was singing.
Nine, for the bus driver.
Ten, for the rain.
Eleven, for the rain.
Twelve, for the rain.
Thirteen, for the….
It wasn't raining anymore.
Suddenly he can't feel the small droplets thudding against his head and sliding down into his shirt, socks, and shoes. He almost thanks the rain for it's inconsistency that's finally done him some good and looks up to the sky. Strange, Silver never noticed the sky was pink before. Pink and large, and came with the strange smell of that girl on the bus, coupled with what he could faintly distinct was the soft noise of someone badly singing. He quickly whips around to see the girl standing there, umbrella in hand and smiling.
"Hey."
She looks a little different now. She looks a bit more wet, like she was just watching him in the rain while he counted to ten, thirteen. The obnoxious bow on her head is a bit more droopy than before, and that look in her brown eyes is a little bit less aggravating that it is appreciable. He scowls, but it doesn't last long before the rain washes it and messes it up into this strange mix of his scowl and a much more rare smile. He gives up, and gives in.
"Hey."
Looking like that's all the confirmation she needed to her invitation; she asks him where he's going. If he knew, then Silver's pretty sure the next few years of his life would make a lot more sense, but he points up and answers her anyway, "Whichever way this umbrella's going."
Her eyes flash a bit and she seems to get even happier than before (which may or may not be possible), and she tells him she's heading to the library. From there, she just keeps talking, and talking, and talking about everything. Anything. Throughout the whole walk there, and even when Silver followed her inside the library, she just kept chattering. Laughing about the weird colour that you get when you sway in front of a puddle and watch the sun's rays reflect, how she goes to the zoo every Saturday to visit this baby crocodile that she named "Totodile", the list of books that she's returned and is going to take out, how her favourite kind of ice-cream is vanilla cherry but she settles for chocolate most of the time because her's is only a seasonal flavour, and even why she bought the ridiculous hat she wears almost everyday instead of all the others.
(she bought it because she thought it looked lonely on the rack by itself).
"I'm Lyra, by the way."
Silver only barely registers how she first mentions this on the way out of the building, and how he still hasn't told her his name yet, either.
"Silver."