Day: 6
Time: 38 minutes
Prompt: cut
Theme: rain
Words: 645

Huh. It was raining. She wasn't even surprised.

Leaf secured the door of her secret base with a hefty mat and settled down into the chair with a weary sigh. She'd been stationed in Hoenn to research the behavior of wild Pokémon for Professor Oak, but he had failed to mention that the entire region was just about the wettest place she'd ever been. Kanto didn't have any sort of weather like this. The locals in the Lilycove Pokémon Center hadn't even batted an eyelash at the several impending hurricane warnings displayed on the small television a few months ago. She supposed it was a foreign thing to actually worry when potentially life-threatening situations were close by.

Then again, she was inside a tiny grass hut in the middle of what sounded like it was going to be a fairly-sized storm. Whatever. It was all in the name of science.

On a whim, she removed the mat and peered outside, looking around quickly to see if there were any stragglers caught in the rain. It was a good thing she had, too, because in the distance she could see a sudden gale throw a rain-spotted figure against the side of the rope bridge, making it sway dangerously.

Shit. Without a second thought, she darted out from her secret base and sprinted towards the man, slipping around in the mud in her haste.

"Come with me!" she yelled to him, but she doubted he could hear her over the screams of the wind.

He ran towards her and she grabbed his hand to run with him. Nearly blinded by the pelting rain, she scrambled to find the entrance, but she located it soon and pulled him inside, panting and dripping.

The interior of the little grass hut was strangely quiet compared to the cacophony of sharp raindrops against mud just outside. She helped the stranger into a chair and helped him remove the scarf he had tied around his face to keep out the rain, and let out a gasp of surprise when she saw a pair of very familiar brown eyes and a shock of dark hair.

"Oh my god, Red, I've missed you so much."

"Leaf," he croaked, and a relieved smile spread over his face. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm on duty for Oak—what are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be back home now!" she chastised as he removed his soaked jacket and draped it over the back of the chair.

"Had to stop on my way home from Sinnoh, and then this happened." He gestured to the door.

Leaf began rummaging around in the small closet. "I've barely got enough for one bed, let alone two… I can sleep on the mats, I guess," she suggested.

Red shook his head. "No, I've got to get back home soon. My mom's expecting—"

Leaf gave him a patronizing look. "You think you're going to be able to fly in this weather? You couldn't make it through it; how d'you think you're going to get out from the middle of it?"

"Magic," he said. "Witchcraft. Voodoo. Sorcery." But he joined her in setting up the meager bed of tiny cushions and blankets.

"So you can have this," she said, looking at the heap of cushions, "and I'll take the chair, then." She pulled up the chair he'd been sitting on: a spindly thing with a faded pink heart on the back. It didn't look particularly comfortable.

"Don't be ridiculous," he insisted. "You'll sleep on the bed."

"Then—then you will, too," she said, and his face colored.

"If you say so," he said quietly.

And it felt natural, right, to slip his arm around her as they lay there listening to the rain attack the hut's grassy roof, and he couldn't remember why they had ever been apart.

a/n: I was gonna go into more detail about the split-up thing, but I ran out of time :P damn time limits. I was imagining that they had peacefully broken it off after Leaf accepted a field job from Professor Oak, which would require her to journey a lot (hence the Hoenn setting), and right before Red would take his sojourn on Mt. Silver.

also the majority of this was written at approximately 3:30 am, when apparently my filters come off and I type as fast as I can

Ebaz