DISCLAIMER: I do not own Pokémon.


Attic

It was an evening like any other in midsummer Pallet Town. The pidgey were singing, the sky was a beautiful reddish orange, and the wind whistled gently through the trees, allowing peaceful, delicate chords of nature to sail through the air. This idyllic stillness extended to the lower floors of the quaint Ketchum household, where one could practically hear a pin drop; the attic room, however, was rife with activity.

"Try it a little more to the left," Brock suggested, stroking his chin.

"Okay…here?" Delia Ketchum complied as she moved the red rose between her finger and thumb along by about an inch.

"Hmm…I'm still not sure," he answered with a frown.

"Well, I think you already look too adorable for words, Ashy!" the energetic woman gushed, pinching the cheek of her 16-year-old son as if he were still a young child.

Needless to say, Ash did not share his mother's enthusiasm. "Mom!" he whined embarrassedly as his older friend began sniggering.

Delia pinned the rose onto the squirming boy's grey suit jacket and stood behind him to observe his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. "There. That looks lovely, doesn't it?"

Ash shuffled awkwardly in place, wincing every time the floorboards creaked underneath him. "Are you sure all of this is really necessary?" He gestured towards his uncharacteristically formal clothing. "It's just Misty."

Brock jumped slightly at the gasping noise Delia made. "That's a horrible thing to say about your best friend!" she scolded him. "Imagine if she heard you say that!"

But Ash did not have to imagine. He had been on the receiving end of his short-tempered friend's legendary ire more times than he could count.

"Oh, but isn't this romantic?" Delia continued, turning daintily on her heel to stare out of the triangular window with a blissful smile on her face. "I was about your age when your father and I went on our first date. I can still see him as clearly as if it were yesterday; he was so handso-"

"It's not a date!" Ash bellowed, his face red and his eyes fixed on the ground. "How many times do I have to tell you?!"

"Oh, of course, honey. My mistake." She giggled, and for a brief moment, Ash thought the topic had been successfully dropped, until…

"Well, look at you!" came a distinctly high-pitched voice from the trapdoor behind him.

"Hey, Tracey," he waved solemnly at the mirror as the green-haired man made his way up the ladder and into his view.

"By the looks of that getup, you'd think you and Misty were getting married or something!" he exclaimed jestingly.

Unsurprisingly, Ash did not seem to see the funny side of his friend's comment. "M-M-Married?" The mortified boy gulped. "W-Who said anything about getting…"

"Now, now, Tracey, one thing at a time." Delia waggled her finger playfully at the pokémon watcher.

"Yeah," Brock agreed, leaning against the mirror with his arms folded. "I mean, the guy's only just getting used to the dating game!"

Ash broke out into another furious blush. "IT'S NOT A DATE!" he shrieked frantically. "Misty and I are just going out for a meal before I head out to the Battle Frontier again! That's all it is! Just a friendly meal!"

"Oh, really?" Brock countered, a sly smirk gracing his features. "Then why wasn't I invited? Or Tracey? Or May and Max, for that matter?"

The flushed boy turned his attention to the window. "Well…I…"

"And how come you were so jittery and nervous when you asked her the other night?" pondered the pokémon breeder, earning him a confused glare that led him to guiltily add, "Um…I may have been watching from the top of the stairs…"

"And…" Tracey began in a tone similar to Brock's, "Misty sure seems to think it's a date. I just came from the lab; she's been running about like a headless torchic for the past hour trying to get ready! Do you really want to be the one to tell her she's got the wrong idea?"

In that moment, Ash's hot flush instantly turned cold. As reassuring as his constant denial had been to him up until that point, he now realised that all he had managed to do with such a strategy was back himself into a corner. He neither wanted nor had the courage to tell Misty the night was off – especially after nearly a whole week of trying to impress her – but that meant indirectly admitting to the whole room that tonight was, in fact, exactly what they had speculated that it was.

Sighing in defeat, Ash shifted back in front of the mirror to re-evaluate his most current predicament. "This is stupid," he grumbled, tugging at the tight knot of his royal blue tie. "I look like a waiter at a comedy club."

Brock chuckled before stroking his chin again. "Now that you mention it, I think that rose might be a bit much. If we only had something to…" He creaked his way around the room, dodging through piles of boxes and coughing intermittently from the dust his movement kicked up. After a few moments of searching, an idea – along with the low ceiling beam he was standing under – struck him square in the head.

"Ooh!" he cried in both triumph and pain. "I've got it! Back in a sec!"

True to his word, no sooner had the pokémon breeder slid down the ladder and raced across the hall than he returned only seconds later, barely giving anyone the chance to register that he had even gone.

"Here we go." Brock nodded to himself as he made his way over to the curious Ash. With one hand, he swiftly plucked the rose from the boy's lapel, and with the other, gently tucked an ornately folded piece of cloth into his breast pocket. Ash looked down at his friend's handiwork, his heart leaping when his eyes focused upon the object in question. He would recognise that uniquely pink fabric anywhere: his prized handkerchief from Misty on the day she left.

"That ought to get her attention, eh?" Brock grinned up at the blushing pokémon trainer.

Ash, unable to find any words to fire back at his narrow-eyed friend, simply mumbled out a faint, "Th-Thanks."

"Hey, that looks much better!" Tracey observed from his new position to the left of the mirror. "I've got to get a sketch of this."

While the excitable man proceeded to sit cross-legged on the floor and scribble away at one of his many sketchpads, Ash absentmindedly allowed his eyes to wander from corner to corner around his mother's makeshift haven in the house he grew up in. As a child, he was rarely allowed in the attic for fear that he would break something or hurt himself in some way; as a result, the boy's surroundings were still somewhat unfamiliar to him, even after all these years. Cardboard boxes and filing cabinets covered almost every inch of floor in the room, with only the thinnest of walkways between them leading into the main patch of space in the centre where they were all gathered. A triangle of light blazed through from the window to his left, bathing the room in beams of rustic amber hues, and as the latest burst of sunlight illuminated the small desk below the window, Ash's eyes landed on a distinctive red, white and green item that caused his mouth to curl into a boyish smile.

"Can't I at least wear my old hat?" he pleaded, gesturing over to the tattered yet beloved headwear from his youth.

"Oh, honestly, Ash!" Delia huffed in disbelief. "No son of mine is going to eat at a nice place like La Dragonnaire wearing that filthy old thing!"

Before the glowering boy could commence his obligatory whinging spree, he was silenced by a pair of simultaneous gasping sounds coming from both Brock's and Tracey's directions.

"La Dragonnaire?!" the two dumbfounded young men exclaimed, once again, at the same time.

"Yes, isn't it wonderful?" Delia beamed, clasping her hands together. "The owner and I go way back; he can usually get me a reservation whenever I want one. It just so happened that Samuel and I were planning to go tonight, but when I found out my Ashy had finally asked Misty out on a date, I just had to let them have it!"

Brock and Tracey stared at each other incredulously for a brief moment before turning to meet the gaze of the increasingly perplexed Ash.

"What?" Ash asked. "What's the big deal? It's a Kalosian place, and I know Misty loves all that fancy Kalos stuff, so…"

The boy's meandering intonations were more than enough to confirm his apparent obliviousness, and the pair across from him immediately began rolling around on the floor in hysterical laughter.

"It's not just a Kalosian place, Ash," Brock spluttered as the laughter began to die down. "La Dragonnaire is said to be the most romantic restaurant in all of Kanto. People come from all over the world to experience it. You take Misty there, and you're pretty much admitting that you're in love with her and want her to be yours forever."

"And to think you were trying to convince us it wasn't even a date!" Tracey howled.

While they continued their juvenile bantering amongst themselves, Ash turned to his mother, his gobsmacked face lit up like a staryu's core.

"You didn't tell me about that part!" he hissed, his eyes beginning to water from the embarrassment.

"I genuinely thought you knew, sweetheart!" She chuckled uneasily. "Though I did wonder why you agreed to it so quickly."

"Great." He sighed, throwing his hands up in the air.

"Hey, don't listen to them, okay?" She reached forward and tilted her son's chin up with her index finger. "They're just exaggerating to get under your skin. When you get there, you'll find it's not nearly as bad as you think it's going to be. You do like Misty, don't you?"

Ash's cheeks reddened once again. "I…I guess…"

"And you like how you feel when you're around her?"

He nodded.

"Then you've got nothing to worry about." Delia smiled warmly as she stepped forward and pulled her teenage boy into a tender, motherly hug. "I'm so proud of you, you know."

"Thanks, Mom," he replied through the fabric of her pink shirt. During the embrace, Delia casually glanced over at the clock on the wall, yelping in surprise when the alarming numbers became clear to her.

"Goodness me, look at the time!" she squealed, causing Ash to fly backwards in shock. "Your table's booked in half an hour – we'd better get you over to the lab to pick up Misty!"

Across the room, a now much calmer Brock and Tracey nodded their assent, and, one by one, the group made its way out of the attic and down the stairs of the Ketchum residence towards the front door. The cool summertime breeze on Ash's face provided a welcome change from the stuffiness of the attic he had been trapped in for the last hour, and a sudden note of excitement floated atop the river of nervousness sloshing around in his stomach.

"Well…this is it," he said, turning around to the three figures standing in the doorway.

"Oh my," Delia murmured breathily, her hand on her heart and her eyes glassy with tears. "My little baby going on his first date…stay there, I have to get a picture of this!"

"Mom," Ash whined as he watched his emotional mother disappear behind the doorframe, returning a brief second later with a camera in her hand.

Just as she held the camera up to her face, Brock leant over to her and whispered a few words in her ear. The young woman sighed slightly before breaking out in a small smile and nodding her head. "I suppose you're right," she chirped amicably.

Taking that as his cue, Brock untucked his tanned arm from behind his back, revealing a small item he held in his hand.

"Catch," he called over to Ash, throwing the boy's old Pokémon League cap the short distance across the threshold and into his arms.

"On second thought, we think maybe you should wear this to La Dragonnaire." He grinned in a friendly yet mischievous manner. "After all, how else is Misty going to know it's you, right?"

"Oh har har." Ash scowled sarcastically. In reality, however, as he slipped on the faded but still perfectly functional hat, an inexplicable feeling of warmth and relaxation overcame him. It was, indeed, a nice thought that a simple item of clothing he had been wearing the day Misty fished him out of that river would be worn again on the night of their first date together, almost seven years later.

"Now get out of here, lover boy," Brock teased, while Tracey and Delia laughed along. "Just make sure the two of you are back by ten, you hear? And don't do anything I wouldn't do!" he finished with a sly wink.

Though a small hint of pink washed over the boy's cheeks, it was clear from the smirk on his face that he had not fallen into his jesting friend's trap. "Well, I'm definitely not doing anything you would do, so that doesn't leave me with many options, now does it?"

Brock's face fell, and an embarrassed bead of sweat ran down the side of his head. "I, er…tsk. Smartass."

After a quick round of goodbyes, the pokémon trainer then turned on his heel and strolled merrily up the dirt road of twilight Pallet Town in the direction of Professor Oak's laboratory, where his date was no doubt waiting eagerly for him.

Delia, Brock and Tracey remained in the doorway for quite some time, taking delight in watching their 'project' bound down the road with a charming spring in his step. A few moments of silence passed before Brock chuckled slightly as he opened his mouth to speak.

"He'll be fine," he said to no-one in particular, a peaceable smile on his face.

"I know he will," Delia agreed, her voice slightly wavy from her overwhelming influx of emotion. "They grow up so fast, don't they?"

To her right, Tracey, in contrast to his two friends, wore a markedly puzzled expression, his brow furrowed as if he were in a state of deep thought.

"Is something the matter, Tracey?" Delia asked innocently as she turned to face the pokémon watcher.

The young man shrugged. "Oh, it's nothing really. I was just wondering; why would you and the professor have a reservation at La Dragonnaire? Unless…"

But before the rapidly flustered woman could answer, Tracey waved his arms dismissively in front of him and shook his head animatedly. "Actually, never mind. I don't think I want to know."