A/N: An experimental foray into the world of humour. I'm not promising great results, people.
Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon, or the million other things I referenced in here. Cookie for you if you find them all.
I appraised the raven-haired trainer with one thin brow raised, my arms folded across my chest, challenging him silently, daring him to attempt to speak. Unfortunately, however, he seemed to be as dense as everyone gave him credit for, as after a tense silence, his voice shattered the very still air of the Cerulean Gym's pool area.
"Misty—" he tried, obviously wishing to calm me down, though the pleading note to his voice made me slightly sick to the stomach.
I raised one slim finger, my brows snapping together as I turned a frosty blue glare on him. "One more word out of you, Ashton Ketchum," I snarled, "and I will have Gyarados incinerate you where you stand."
As if to back up my—though I hated to admit it—fraudulous claim, from behind me in the large pool I reserved for his use, Gyarados roared, the sound shaking the foundations of the Gym. Ash paled visibly, and I wondered at how thick he really was—after the numerous times I'd helped to save his sorry hide, did he really think I'd actually order my Pokémon to "incinerate" him? Amending my thoughts, I allowed myself to admit that even if I wouldn't order his immediate living cremation, I would probably hurt him if he attempted to speak—but he didn't need to know that I was not planning on following through with my threat. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes as his brown-eyed gaze flicked nervously between myself and the atrocious Pokémon behind me, wondering if perhaps Gary was right, and he really was lacking in a brain, having truly relied on sheer dumb luck to win his way through as many battles as he had.
"Really, Misty, come on—where's your sense of humour?" he whined, obviously having decided I wouldn't end his life just yet.
Disbelief overrode my promise to myself to hurt him should he speak. "Sense of humour?" I repeated, stunned. "Sense of humour?!"
Ash winced, running a hand through his unruly black hair sheepishly, trying to grin his way out of it. I took a step toward him. "If you had any taste whatsoever, you'd know what equated to 'humour' and what didn't!" I snapped, accentuating my words by jabbing the air with a finger as I took, slow, deliberately menacing steps towards him.
"You know what?" I had reached him by this point, and I glared up—yes, up; unfortunately, Ash now was a few inches taller than me—at him, noting with some sadistic glee the light of fear in his eyes. "I'm sick of you. Honestly, Ash—'where's your sense of humour?'" I mocked. "For your information, Mr. Pokémon Master, hiding the entire contents of my unmentionables drawer throughout the living areas in the Gym and using pages of my diary as 'clues' to find them is not funny!"
I desparately tried to hide the way my cheeks flamed, and hoped that he'd put it down to anger, not any other emotion.
"You know, Misty, if I didn't know better I'd say you were embarrassed, not angr—"
Smack.
Well, that certainly felt good. My hand tingled comfortingly, and the large red handprint which had so nicely wiped the disgusting smirk off his face seemed, to me, much like the finest work of art. Ash gritted his teeth and rubbed his cheek, but before he could comment, I had pushed past him, and stormed from Gyarados' pool area through the corridors of the Gym into the adjoining house where we lived. Grumbling under my breath, I yanked open the freezer door, pulled out a glistening tub of vanilla ice-cream, kicked the door shut with my foot, and reached up to the cuboards above the sink to get a bowl and the ice-cream scoop. Viciously digging into the tub with the scoop and slamming the ice-cream into my bowl with exaggerated force—all the while muttering some rather choice insults about a certain raven-haired trainer—I threw the scoop into the sink and forced the tub back into the freezer.
I told myself that eating ice-cream was most certainly not a comfort thing, as I sat down angrily on the couch, the cushions sinking under me. I was just royally pissed off, that was all—and royally pissed off teenage girls with violent natures such as my own were perfectly entitled to calm themselves down by indulging in frozen goodness. Feeling entirely justified in my actions, I began to eat, cursing Ash Ketchum to hell and back as I angrily relived the events leading up to my current situation.
My sisters had up and left exactly one week ago, when they had entered in one of those stupid competitions on the back of soft-drink bottles—and, heaven forbid, had won. The competition had been a chance to have one photoshoot session with some small-time magazine editor, with promises of fame and fortune should a hitherto undiscovered beauty with astounding talent be discovered. The irony of the fact that such a competition was on the back of soft-drink bottles seemed to have been lost on them, and while I made snide remarks from the sidelines they had squealed with joy when they had received the text informing them of their win.
Either they had forgotten that the time of their trip to get this photoshoot done had coincided with the visit of Ash Ketchum, or all thoughts of hormonal teenagers and being in a house alone had escaped them, and they had all left, jittering and excitable, crammed into a taxi not one hour before Ash had arrived. I had closed the Gym, thinking that for the week and a half he was here, we could spend the time catching up rather than enduring challengers.
However, I had not counted on waking up on the morning of the third day—we had even only argued playfully up until then—to find, stuck to my door, a large paper sign which read, "Rise and shine, Misty, we're going on a treasure hunt!", which upon closer inspection, had proved to be constructed of several small pages—several diary sized pages, in fact. Shaking in embarrassment, horror, and then a boiling anger, I had shuddered at the thought of just what he might have read in my diary, when I noticed that the drawer which usually contained my unmentionables was not closed properly, being slightly ajar.
With a growing sense of horror, I had yanked open the drawer, only to be ready to pull out my fiery hair strand by strand when I had discovered it empty. I swear to Mew the very foundations of the Gym must have been shaken by my livid scream of "Ash Ketchum, I am going to murder you!", as I had raced out of my room to find, there, on the banister of the staircase, another diary sized page, but this time, accompanied by a pair of plain white briefs which I instantly recognized, because of the blue M.W embroidered in one corner. Not knowing whether to cry out of shame, scream the house down, or tear my raven-haired best friend—ha, some best friend!—limb from limb, I had finally settled on a combination of the latter two, deciding I would not give him the satisfaction of knowing he had shamed me.
Thus, a continuous barrage of screamed insults had been thrown at Ash, from the moment I had found him at my breakfast table, with a large grin on his face, looking as if he had not a care in the world. The grin had morphed into a very infuriating smirk as he had spied me, absolutely livid and still in my pyjamas, storming down the staircase. At any other time I would have been unable to stop myself finding his expression at that point stupidly attractive, yet the way his gaze raked up and down my body once, reminding me of exactly what I was wearing, was enough to make me literally scream with frustration—half at him and half at the lack of available objects to throw at him—and stomp back upstairs, only to come back down properly dressed and ready to begin the hurling of any insult that came to mind.
You disgusting, perverted, freak, was, as I remember, the first insult that flew from my lips—and a great deal of satisfaction it had brought me, too, because I knew I was right. I've always enjoyed knowing I'm right. I like the feeling of utter superiority it brings, knowing I'm right, and whoever else it is—mostly Ash—is wrong. Several heated arguments and the recollection of all my undergarments later, I find myself in my current situation—absolutely livid, and stuffing my face full of vanilla ice-cream.
However, either Ash must have thought more time had passed than it had—or had I lost track?—as the object of my thoughts approached. Had I been paying attention instead of imagining several creative ways to hurt him rather badly, I would have heard his footsteps upon the tiled floor of the kitchen as he neared the loungeroom.
"That's going straight to your hips," he quipped from the doorway, where he was leaning negligently against the frame, eyeing me as I angrily finished off the last of my ice-cream.
I snarled, turning around. I contemplated the fact that he'd obviously decided he really didn't value his life—or at least his limbs—all that much. Not dignifying his remark with a verbal response, I threw the still-wet spoon at his head. It missed as he ducked, but not by much, causing me to inwardly wince when it left a small chip in the wood behind his head. My sisters would kill me when they saw it.
"Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted by a lie, right, Mist?"
I stood, brushing past him as I went to put my bowl in the sink. "What happened to insults about being scrawny? Changed your mind so quickly, Ashy-boy?"
Ash scowled, and I grinned, loving how I could still needle him with that one single nickname. I put my bowl in the sink with a little more force than was strictly necessary, but did not notice he had stepped closer. "Can't you just drop it?"
"Maybe when you grow up a bit, Ash," I snapped, turning back and starting a little when I realised the distance between us had halved. He was now leaning back against the kitchen bench, elbows resting on the smooth white surface, mischief glinting in his eyes and a smirk hanging around his lips.
"I am grown up, Misty."
There was something in his voice that I couldn't quite place, and momentarily, my anger gave way to puzzlement, before I met his eyes, and cursed him for all I was worth. Despite myself, I couldn't help finding him ridiculously attractive in that moment, with that smirk and those eyes, and Mew, his lips...
No, Misty, now is not the time to be thinking of him that way! You are angry—angry, dammit!
Oh, what it would be like to kiss those—
No, Misty, no!
I wasn't sure if I should have been more concerned about the fact that I was arguing with myself in my head, or that I was arguing with myself and losing. I glared up at the object of my thoughts, only to be met with a look that was not one I was used to seeing from Ash Ketchum. My cursed heart beat an erratic rhythm against my ribcage, and I had to fight not to gasp.
"Don't look at me like that." I tried to inject a certain amount of annoyance into my voice, but somehow I don't think I pulled it off. However, disregarding this, I brushed past him, intending to stomp rather ungracefully back into the loungeroom and ignore him in angry silence, when I felt a hand unexpectedly close around my upper arm. I whirled around, intent on giving him a piece of my mind.
"Like what, Misty?" he asked me, beating me to speech, that infuriatingly attractive smirk—stop it, Misty, you're angry, not lovesick—still in place.
I wrenched my arm from his grip and folded my arms across my chest. "You know damn well what."
He grinned at me and stretched, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. The hem of his shirt lifted up a little as he did so, showing a small teasing sliver of skin. Of their own accord, my eyes darted down and back up again—and curse him, he'd noticed. "Mew," he breathed in mock-astonishment. "Alert the authorities, the ice queen is melting; were you admiring me, Mist?"
Obviously, cold, forceful anger was no longer working. Instead, I settled for my second favourite—cockiness. Fighting fire with fire; if Ash could be arrogant, so could I. In fact, if I do say so myself, I am quite a lot better at being arrogant and sneering than he is, if I work at it. Even if he did grow up with the King of Sneer, Gary Oak.
"In your dreams, Ketchum," I retorted, raising one eyebrow as I gave him a challenging stare.
"Hey, I'm a teenage guy: these urges come naturally." Unbeknownst to us, heated argument had slipped into playful banter. Even I didn't mind—much. I certainly had not forgiven him yet for the stunt he had pulled this morning, and I knew how to hold a grudge, as he'd discovered shortly after meeting me, when I had refused to let the issue of my fried bike drop.
"What, the urge to be admired? I didn't know you had a desire to be a pretentious pretty-boy." Was that a bit too much sarcasm I'd injected there? I couldn't be quite sure, for Ash had taken a step closer to me and I was too preoccupied trying to figure what kind of insane course of action he'd follow this time.
"You knew what I meant—mean—Mist," he muttered, his voice dropping in volume.
I scowled at him and cursed the fact that the first item of clothing I had found in my rage this morning had come fully equipped with a reasonably low neckline. "Pervert."
He smirked. I noticed with a mild amount of concern that he was closer again, although I couldn't quite bring myself to move away. "You're a teenager, too; it's built in to our genes, or something."
"Oh my gosh—genes, Ash, genes."
He glanced at me, confused. I felt the need to elaborate, if only to prove a point to him—and because it was a chance to needle him. "You actually know what that word means? Praise Mew," I cried sarcastically to no-one in particular. "Ash Ketchum possesses a brain."
"Very funny," he muttered, before mischief brightened his dark-brown eyes again. "Doesn't change the point I was making, though."
"Excuse me?" I very nearly literally gaped at him. "Who went through someone's underwear drawer?!"
He chose not to dignify my reminder of the reason for our quarrel—well, his scoldng, really—with an argumentative response, instead saying, "Let's just forget about it."
"Make me." My brows snapped together again, and I re-folded my arms across my chest, anger reignited.
I was so intently waiting for a response which would give me cause to continue the argument that I did not notice the hand that slipped up to steal my hair tie until my shoulder-length fiery hair fell out of its hold, brushing my cheeks and shoulders. "What are you—" I began, as he took advantage of my stunned state to run a hand through my hair, once, twice, then resting it on my neck.
Was it just me, or was he closer now?
"Making you forget," he murmured, grinning at me, although I could tell he was nervous. I wondered if he could hear my heart beating at a frenzied pace; I knew for a fact he could see the blush rising steadily up my cheeks.
I still don't know why I let him do it, although, in retrospect, I am glad he did. Ever so excruiatingly, nervously, slowly, he leaned down and kissed me. All coherent thought fled my mind as I began to kiss him back, my arms winding around his neck as his free arm encircled my waist, pulling me closer. There were no fireworks like the romance novels I loved said, but it was Ash—Ash—and his lips were just as soft as I'd imagined and he was kissing me—me. That's what made it perfec—
Smack.
"How dare you!" I snapped, pushing him away from me, my hand tingling and his face red. Unfortunately, as my mind had began to wander and begin to play in the gutter, I'd remembered everything that had happened up until that point.
"Misty—" he began.
Smack.
"Now we're even." I grinned at him, and, feeling bold, pulled a very bewildered Ash toward me for another kiss, feeling him grin in return against my lips.
Not that it meant I'd forgiven him, or anything.
A/N: Seems I've been told this wasn't quite as terrible as I thought. :3
- Naranne