i.
Her lips taste like the sun.
When he kisses her, it's bright red and neon oranges and neon yellows and flashes of color he didn't even know existed. It's a burning sunset that pops in his face, and no rainbow will ever compare, not ever.
When he tells her, she laughs.
"You are a boy, after all," she teases and he quirks a brow.
Then she goes on to explain how the color sense of boys is a lot lower than girls… Or something like that. He stops paying attention halfway through and just stares at her and the way everything sounds when it comes of out that pretty mouth and her rainbow lips.
ii.
By the time Saturday rolls around, they're too far into this to break apart. They run away to some strange, cheap motel in the middle of some, stupid route that Lysandre can't recall. It won't matter, in the end, because they are here and finally alone.
Diantha is too well known a woman, too pretty and too much an actress to walk down the street without autograph hounds and paparazzi. On a normal day, she tells him, she'll sign about fifty-five autographs.
"You're too good at math."
She laughs again. No, she says, she's just a woman who likes numbers.
He refuses to believe that.
iii.
The room is trashed by the time they leave on Tuesday.
She's angry all of a sudden – for what seems to be no reason – and he's confused. What's wrong, what's wrong, what's wrong?
"August called me."
Oh.
"He wants to know where I am."
Oh.
"We were supposed to meet up today."
Then he's mad, and he's asking her why, why did she plan to do that? He tells himself he's not jealous, but he is, and all the colors opposite of what he saw when he kissed her pop up around him.
"A girl needs to have a good cover-up story."
That makes him even angrier. Diantha may be a movie star, but that doesn't matter. It makes him mad, as if she's having an affair or something.
But she already is with him, so why is he so mad?
By the time they stop fighting, she's gone, and everything's a mess.
iv.
She apologizes to him later that following Wednesday.
He doesn't say anything besides 'I forgive you.'
He's not going to apologize. If they are to be together, then she must sacrifice something as well.
v.
She yells at him in the café when he talks about eternal beauty and youth, and whatever he's doing in Team Flare. All she knows is that she wants no part of it.
When that trainer leaves, she chases him down the street, questions running through her mind, but only one thing leaving her lips.
"I don't want any part of Team Flare."
She turns away before he can say anything more.
vi.
They meet back in the hotel room on Friday. There are no more apologies or blue, purple and green forms of jealousy. There are sunset kisses and silly little laughs and confessions.
They go farther in, and he's sure she's drowning.
vii.
They run away that Saturday.
August hears none of it, nor does the rest of the world. Team Flare's plans are put into motion by some silly little girl who lost her way, defeated Lysandre and it's an emotional battle for her.
They read about it in the papers.
The movie star is reporting missing, as is Lysandre by August, eventually. People stop talking about it a month later, still confused and hurt, but starting to care less. They say she was sick of the limelight, and that Lysandre died or something like that. Most of the attention is placed on Diantha because she's a movie star.
But no one assumes they ran away together. They laugh at that, how no one thinks logically, and then Diantha talks about math some more with Lysandre sighing in the background. She's too smart to be running away with him, too pretty and famous.
But then she tells him that his thoughts are poison and she wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
"That's cheesy."
"Why are you blushing, then?"
OH GOD I PUT THIS COUPLE TO SHAME I MADE IT TOO FLUFFY AND A LITTLE TOO CUTE AND I'M SORRY I JUST NEEDED TO WRITE FLUFF GOODBYE-