Ash awoke before Misty the next morning, to the smell of breakfast. He
smiled, figuring James was the one cooking and smiled further as he looked
down on the woman sleeping peacefully against his chest.
He sighed when his stomach growled. "Misty." He whispered in her ear. She smiled and waved her hand as if swatting a Yanma. He sighed again as she stayed asleep. He wriggled down to where he could reach her lips and kissed her lightly.
She gave a light, almost comforted moan and slowly opened her eyes. She jumped when she realized she was being held.
"Morning Mist." Ash said. She jumped again and struggled to get away.
"Who are you?" She asked, squeezing into the corner of the room and mentally running through a checklist to try to help her figure out whom the bearded man she had slept with was.
"It's me, Ash." He answered confused.
"Ash?" She asked, moving closer slowly. She touched his cheek, and then rushed to him, crying.
"Where have you been?" She whispered, crying into his shirt. "It's been so long."
"I'm sorry." He said, running his fingers through her hair and rubbing her back. She finally stopped crying and took a step back to get a good look at her boyfriend who she hadn't seen or heard from in almost nine months.
"What's the beard for?" She asked jokingly.
"There was only one razor for the whole group," He answered. "And it wasn't very good." He said and continued at Misty's expression. "It was Bugsy's Scyther." He explained. "He was the only one brave enough to keep his beard short."
Misty smiled and pulled them back together. "I guess I'll accept that explanation." She said with a smile and hugged him.
She looked up when his stomach rumbled. He shrugged with a sheepish grin. Her smile grew, as if coming closer to accepting this boy in front of her as her Ash.
"I guess we'd better get something to eat." She said, laughing when her stomach joined his.
They exited his room, just starting to enjoy being back together, when they passed the bathroom and a thought came to Ash's mind. "Give me a few minutes." He said, indicating the bathroom. She giggled and kissed his cheek before moving to the stairs.
Ash sighed with a smile as he began to remove his beard, a bit reluctantly. He stopped for a moment and groaned when he heard Misty scream. "Oops." He said, smiling sheepishly as himself in the mirror. "Guess I should have told her about Jessie and James."
He finished removing his beard and walked downstairs to find Misty, who after a small smile at his more recognisable face, glared at him from the table. Jessie, James, and another voice were talking in the kitchen over the pots they were clanging about.
He knew he was in trouble, but tried to cover himself with a false smile. "Sorry about not telling you about them." He said, taking the chair she indicated, across the table from her.
"What is Team Rocket doing here?" She growled.
"First of all, Team Rocket is almost no more." He answered, nerviously pressing to the back of his chair at her glare. "And anyway, they've turned away from crime. They want to try actual business."
Her face softened, but not enough to make Ash try to continue the conversation.
Eventually, Brock came in, followed by Jessie and James, carrying plates. They handed Ash and Misty theirs and sat down. Noticing the tension in the air between the two, they stayed quiet until Brock, not thinking, tried to start a conversation.
"Ash, what happened with you and Misty on the trip." He questioned. Misty raised her eyebrow, wanting to know what had happened the almost year they had been apart. Brock continued, not noticing his friends expressions. "Gary and I couldn't figure out what happened between you two after that kiss."
As the last word left his mouth, he realized his audience and tried to stop the word from exiting, but it was too late. He looked nerviously between his friends. Misty looked at her, possibly soon to be was-a-boyfriend, in rage. Ash was alternating glares at him and pleading looks at Misty. Brock and the former Team Rocket members looked between the two and silently prayed that they wouldn't have a reason to wear black in the near future.
Misty's rage finally exploded. "Ash Ketchum." She screamed at him. "You leave on a trip and completely forget about me while I stayed here worrying about you! And then you try to return to me all the while hiding another relationship!" She swung her mallet down, but it was short and ended up smashing a hole in the table where his plate had been. She left it there and stormed up to her room, planning to pack and leave.
When the door slammed, the four sitting at the table seemed to return to life.
After Brock tried, and failed, to remove the mallet from the table, Jessie picked it up easily and set it aside. "So what did happen between you and that girl?" She asked Ash, who was staring forlornly at the chair Misty had been sitting in.
"If you really want to know." Ash answered softly. "Then get Misty to talk to me. She's the one who needs to know." He finished, throwing a glare at Brock.
The man nodded and looked to Jessie. "You're probably the only one she'll talk to without trying to kill them." He said.
Jessie nodded and started to accend the stairs, the three men slowly following. She knocked on the closed door after the guys had taken cover in the guest room adjacent to Ash's.
"What!" Came the slightly strangled yell.
"I wanna talk." Jessie said. She smiled as the door opened.
"You just wanna hear what happened." Misty answered as the woman entered. "He won't tell you unless he tells me first, will he?" Jessie blushed in answer. Misty nodded and raised her voice. "You'd better tell them now Ash. 'Cause next time I see you there won't be a table between us to block my mallet." She smiled when she heard a whimper. "Or would you rather we got the story from Misty?" She said with a grin. Her smile grew even wider when a groan answered her and the sound of two pairs of feet going down the stairs.
Jessie closed the door and moved to sit beside the younger woman.
"I can't believe that he cheated on me on the trip." Misty told her. "A few years ago, we told each other that we were the only ones for each other." She said, her voice slowly growing softer. "I cried myself to sleep for the past month or so, thinking Team Rocket had captured you, Err, them." She said, realizing who she was talking to. Jessie smiled understandingly back at her. "When I woke up wrapped in his arms, I almost thought I was still dreaming." Misty said, voice dropping to the point of tears. "And now, with the knowledge that another probably shared him." She drifted off and tears formed in her eyes.
She turned and cried into her own hands before Jessie took and pulled her to cry into her chest.
After a few minutes, Misty's tears had slowed and she picked her head up. Jessie smiled caringly back down at her. "You know Misty." She said. "I think he cares about you more than you give him credit for. He thought about you a lot. Always trying to hurry the group through meals or along the trail, and whenever someone asked him about it, or started to complain, he always said that he just wanted to get everyone back to their loved ones." Misty turned her face towards the older woman and felt a smile beginning to grow.
"Now, James and I weren't traveling with them at the point that that evidentally happened, but neither of us saw anything between those two." Jessie said. She looked thoughtful for a moment before adding. "Even with thinking they are a couple, my mind can't come up with anything that showed it and the group was always together. It could be dangerous to be separate from the others for a long time."
Misty looked up and her smile grew brighter, but Jessie could tell she was still looking for more proof. Jessie shook her head. "If you want more, ask him." She answered.
Misty grinned and skipped to the door. "Ash." She called sweetly, trying to sound exceptionally cheerful. "Get up here." She said. She stepped back to the bed and sat down next to Jessie.
"Misty?" His voice called cautiously after a few minutes.
"It's ok Ash, I won't hit you." Misty said with a giggle. He crept around the door and watched the two women suspiciously as Misty indicated for him to sit beside her. He did, carefully avoiding touching her in the small space she gave him.
"Tell me what happened with that kiss." Misty said, her voice dipping slightly into anger.
He turned slightly green and saw that she really just wanted to hear what had happened between him and the other gym leader. He sighed and began. "First thing you need to know is that, the night before, she tried to seduce me." He knew she wanted him to continue when she raised her eyebrow. He sighed again and dropped his head. "She came up to me after she had washed in the river we stopped at, exactly for that reason, and came up to me when I was sitting alone thinking." He said tossing a smile at her before continuing. "She came up behind me, wrapped in something that just barely could be called a towel. She thought she would be irresistible with that and still being wet from her bath." He paused and Misty shot him a look that told him he wouldn't live to see nightfall if he didn't continue quickly. He gulped before answered. "It didn't work."
He allowed himself to relax when he saw her anger reduce and she asked. "And?"
"The next morning, while we were clearing up camp, she asked if she could talk to me. We went to another small clearing and she apologized for her actions, especially for the previous night. She said she just wanted to start again; all she wanted was a kiss. I kissed her . . ." He drifted off at seeing Misty change her face to that resembling the expression found on a Gyarados. He waved his hands to try and ward her off when his gaze caught Jessie holding Misty's arms to her sides. "It was only a kiss between friends!" He cried.
She stopped straining against Jessie, but her face stayed the same. "It was a long kiss, but all I could feel through it was that we weren't meant to be anything but best friends. She stayed by my side for the rest of the trip, like you did whenever we journeyed. That's where Brock and Gary got the idea that something happened between me and her." Misty's face grew to a hardened smile and picked up his hand with hers but stayed quiet. Ash lifted his free hand to her cheek while saying, "Misty. I promised you twice that you are the only girl for me."
She smiled, but it was tainted with confusion. "What was the second?" She asked.
He smiled with her. "You know the second. The first was at the party when I became a master." He explained. When her face still showed confusion, he sat back and cleared his throat before singing. "That anyone could take, the place of my number one girl."
Misty glowed with happiness as she threw her arms around him. Ash smiled and kissed her hair, which, he noticed for the first time, was down and had grown almost to mid-back. "I love you." He whispered as she pulled away, storing the fact of her hair into the back of his mind.
"Be a writer. Show, don't tell." Misty answered, pulling her head away from his chest.
He looked confused for a moment before kissing her, deciding he would rather enjoy being on her good side than stopping to figure out her comments.
Jessie smiled before gutting up and leaving the two to make up however they wanted.
________________________________________
that should clear up your question Lethe, I really only wrote that scene for the conflict.
stoko: I almost didn't write that sentence because it nearly confused me too. "The man" (Brock) "his best friend" (Ash) "the girl that sat beside him" (Misty (MT)). I was trying to convey that that was when Brock realized that Ash didn't love Misty the same way he did Rikka. Leading him to ask Ash this chapter.
Nova: Thanks for the vote of confidence, I really thought I had the song all wrong for the scene. (I hope you were talking about Aerosmith)
Everyone, I did say that last chapter was the climax of the 'evil chapters' I think just one more and we'll actually reach the end of them, tying together the song I hinted at at the beginning of this trip and bringing the whole thing to a close.
As a note you all probably won't like, I think Melikki has lost interest in finishing this story. I have all the chapters written (in my head), I just can't get them down into the keyboard. So these last few chapters may take a long time to get out, but I will try to bring this to a close before the end of summer.
Disclaimer: See Author Profile
He sighed when his stomach growled. "Misty." He whispered in her ear. She smiled and waved her hand as if swatting a Yanma. He sighed again as she stayed asleep. He wriggled down to where he could reach her lips and kissed her lightly.
She gave a light, almost comforted moan and slowly opened her eyes. She jumped when she realized she was being held.
"Morning Mist." Ash said. She jumped again and struggled to get away.
"Who are you?" She asked, squeezing into the corner of the room and mentally running through a checklist to try to help her figure out whom the bearded man she had slept with was.
"It's me, Ash." He answered confused.
"Ash?" She asked, moving closer slowly. She touched his cheek, and then rushed to him, crying.
"Where have you been?" She whispered, crying into his shirt. "It's been so long."
"I'm sorry." He said, running his fingers through her hair and rubbing her back. She finally stopped crying and took a step back to get a good look at her boyfriend who she hadn't seen or heard from in almost nine months.
"What's the beard for?" She asked jokingly.
"There was only one razor for the whole group," He answered. "And it wasn't very good." He said and continued at Misty's expression. "It was Bugsy's Scyther." He explained. "He was the only one brave enough to keep his beard short."
Misty smiled and pulled them back together. "I guess I'll accept that explanation." She said with a smile and hugged him.
She looked up when his stomach rumbled. He shrugged with a sheepish grin. Her smile grew, as if coming closer to accepting this boy in front of her as her Ash.
"I guess we'd better get something to eat." She said, laughing when her stomach joined his.
They exited his room, just starting to enjoy being back together, when they passed the bathroom and a thought came to Ash's mind. "Give me a few minutes." He said, indicating the bathroom. She giggled and kissed his cheek before moving to the stairs.
Ash sighed with a smile as he began to remove his beard, a bit reluctantly. He stopped for a moment and groaned when he heard Misty scream. "Oops." He said, smiling sheepishly as himself in the mirror. "Guess I should have told her about Jessie and James."
He finished removing his beard and walked downstairs to find Misty, who after a small smile at his more recognisable face, glared at him from the table. Jessie, James, and another voice were talking in the kitchen over the pots they were clanging about.
He knew he was in trouble, but tried to cover himself with a false smile. "Sorry about not telling you about them." He said, taking the chair she indicated, across the table from her.
"What is Team Rocket doing here?" She growled.
"First of all, Team Rocket is almost no more." He answered, nerviously pressing to the back of his chair at her glare. "And anyway, they've turned away from crime. They want to try actual business."
Her face softened, but not enough to make Ash try to continue the conversation.
Eventually, Brock came in, followed by Jessie and James, carrying plates. They handed Ash and Misty theirs and sat down. Noticing the tension in the air between the two, they stayed quiet until Brock, not thinking, tried to start a conversation.
"Ash, what happened with you and Misty on the trip." He questioned. Misty raised her eyebrow, wanting to know what had happened the almost year they had been apart. Brock continued, not noticing his friends expressions. "Gary and I couldn't figure out what happened between you two after that kiss."
As the last word left his mouth, he realized his audience and tried to stop the word from exiting, but it was too late. He looked nerviously between his friends. Misty looked at her, possibly soon to be was-a-boyfriend, in rage. Ash was alternating glares at him and pleading looks at Misty. Brock and the former Team Rocket members looked between the two and silently prayed that they wouldn't have a reason to wear black in the near future.
Misty's rage finally exploded. "Ash Ketchum." She screamed at him. "You leave on a trip and completely forget about me while I stayed here worrying about you! And then you try to return to me all the while hiding another relationship!" She swung her mallet down, but it was short and ended up smashing a hole in the table where his plate had been. She left it there and stormed up to her room, planning to pack and leave.
When the door slammed, the four sitting at the table seemed to return to life.
After Brock tried, and failed, to remove the mallet from the table, Jessie picked it up easily and set it aside. "So what did happen between you and that girl?" She asked Ash, who was staring forlornly at the chair Misty had been sitting in.
"If you really want to know." Ash answered softly. "Then get Misty to talk to me. She's the one who needs to know." He finished, throwing a glare at Brock.
The man nodded and looked to Jessie. "You're probably the only one she'll talk to without trying to kill them." He said.
Jessie nodded and started to accend the stairs, the three men slowly following. She knocked on the closed door after the guys had taken cover in the guest room adjacent to Ash's.
"What!" Came the slightly strangled yell.
"I wanna talk." Jessie said. She smiled as the door opened.
"You just wanna hear what happened." Misty answered as the woman entered. "He won't tell you unless he tells me first, will he?" Jessie blushed in answer. Misty nodded and raised her voice. "You'd better tell them now Ash. 'Cause next time I see you there won't be a table between us to block my mallet." She smiled when she heard a whimper. "Or would you rather we got the story from Misty?" She said with a grin. Her smile grew even wider when a groan answered her and the sound of two pairs of feet going down the stairs.
Jessie closed the door and moved to sit beside the younger woman.
"I can't believe that he cheated on me on the trip." Misty told her. "A few years ago, we told each other that we were the only ones for each other." She said, her voice slowly growing softer. "I cried myself to sleep for the past month or so, thinking Team Rocket had captured you, Err, them." She said, realizing who she was talking to. Jessie smiled understandingly back at her. "When I woke up wrapped in his arms, I almost thought I was still dreaming." Misty said, voice dropping to the point of tears. "And now, with the knowledge that another probably shared him." She drifted off and tears formed in her eyes.
She turned and cried into her own hands before Jessie took and pulled her to cry into her chest.
After a few minutes, Misty's tears had slowed and she picked her head up. Jessie smiled caringly back down at her. "You know Misty." She said. "I think he cares about you more than you give him credit for. He thought about you a lot. Always trying to hurry the group through meals or along the trail, and whenever someone asked him about it, or started to complain, he always said that he just wanted to get everyone back to their loved ones." Misty turned her face towards the older woman and felt a smile beginning to grow.
"Now, James and I weren't traveling with them at the point that that evidentally happened, but neither of us saw anything between those two." Jessie said. She looked thoughtful for a moment before adding. "Even with thinking they are a couple, my mind can't come up with anything that showed it and the group was always together. It could be dangerous to be separate from the others for a long time."
Misty looked up and her smile grew brighter, but Jessie could tell she was still looking for more proof. Jessie shook her head. "If you want more, ask him." She answered.
Misty grinned and skipped to the door. "Ash." She called sweetly, trying to sound exceptionally cheerful. "Get up here." She said. She stepped back to the bed and sat down next to Jessie.
"Misty?" His voice called cautiously after a few minutes.
"It's ok Ash, I won't hit you." Misty said with a giggle. He crept around the door and watched the two women suspiciously as Misty indicated for him to sit beside her. He did, carefully avoiding touching her in the small space she gave him.
"Tell me what happened with that kiss." Misty said, her voice dipping slightly into anger.
He turned slightly green and saw that she really just wanted to hear what had happened between him and the other gym leader. He sighed and began. "First thing you need to know is that, the night before, she tried to seduce me." He knew she wanted him to continue when she raised her eyebrow. He sighed again and dropped his head. "She came up to me after she had washed in the river we stopped at, exactly for that reason, and came up to me when I was sitting alone thinking." He said tossing a smile at her before continuing. "She came up behind me, wrapped in something that just barely could be called a towel. She thought she would be irresistible with that and still being wet from her bath." He paused and Misty shot him a look that told him he wouldn't live to see nightfall if he didn't continue quickly. He gulped before answered. "It didn't work."
He allowed himself to relax when he saw her anger reduce and she asked. "And?"
"The next morning, while we were clearing up camp, she asked if she could talk to me. We went to another small clearing and she apologized for her actions, especially for the previous night. She said she just wanted to start again; all she wanted was a kiss. I kissed her . . ." He drifted off at seeing Misty change her face to that resembling the expression found on a Gyarados. He waved his hands to try and ward her off when his gaze caught Jessie holding Misty's arms to her sides. "It was only a kiss between friends!" He cried.
She stopped straining against Jessie, but her face stayed the same. "It was a long kiss, but all I could feel through it was that we weren't meant to be anything but best friends. She stayed by my side for the rest of the trip, like you did whenever we journeyed. That's where Brock and Gary got the idea that something happened between me and her." Misty's face grew to a hardened smile and picked up his hand with hers but stayed quiet. Ash lifted his free hand to her cheek while saying, "Misty. I promised you twice that you are the only girl for me."
She smiled, but it was tainted with confusion. "What was the second?" She asked.
He smiled with her. "You know the second. The first was at the party when I became a master." He explained. When her face still showed confusion, he sat back and cleared his throat before singing. "That anyone could take, the place of my number one girl."
Misty glowed with happiness as she threw her arms around him. Ash smiled and kissed her hair, which, he noticed for the first time, was down and had grown almost to mid-back. "I love you." He whispered as she pulled away, storing the fact of her hair into the back of his mind.
"Be a writer. Show, don't tell." Misty answered, pulling her head away from his chest.
He looked confused for a moment before kissing her, deciding he would rather enjoy being on her good side than stopping to figure out her comments.
Jessie smiled before gutting up and leaving the two to make up however they wanted.
________________________________________
that should clear up your question Lethe, I really only wrote that scene for the conflict.
stoko: I almost didn't write that sentence because it nearly confused me too. "The man" (Brock) "his best friend" (Ash) "the girl that sat beside him" (Misty (MT)). I was trying to convey that that was when Brock realized that Ash didn't love Misty the same way he did Rikka. Leading him to ask Ash this chapter.
Nova: Thanks for the vote of confidence, I really thought I had the song all wrong for the scene. (I hope you were talking about Aerosmith)
Everyone, I did say that last chapter was the climax of the 'evil chapters' I think just one more and we'll actually reach the end of them, tying together the song I hinted at at the beginning of this trip and bringing the whole thing to a close.
As a note you all probably won't like, I think Melikki has lost interest in finishing this story. I have all the chapters written (in my head), I just can't get them down into the keyboard. So these last few chapters may take a long time to get out, but I will try to bring this to a close before the end of summer.
Disclaimer: See Author Profile