Note: My sincerest apologies for this being late; all I can say is I've been busy. I hope you'll enjoy the chapter, though, despite it's lateness.

Follow Me

A Pokémon Heart Gold/Soul Silver Story

Chapter Nineteen

Magical Leaf

"Uuuwaaaaah, that feels nice," Leaf said as she held the extendable showerhead aloft, hot, steamy water pouring over her naked body. Excalibur made a small hiss, and with a sigh, Leaf showered his head as he sat in her lap. "You're such a demanding thing, aren't you..."

Soul and Chocobo were already in the bathtub, Soul staring gloomily at the tiled floor while Chocobo sat along the shallow edge, preening his feathers and splashing warm water in between them. Soul rested her chin on her folded arms, her mind lost in thoughts of Silver. What could she have done to make him so angry? He seemed mad about her meeting with Red, but why was this so? Why was it such a big deal? It certainly wasn't that momentous of an occasion to her at the time she met him, so why...? She just couldn't wrap her head around it. The whole thing addled her brain and made her dizzy, although it could be that she'd been soaking in the water too long.

The boys had been nice enough to let the girls have first dibs on the bath, so she and Leaf had taken it hostage. Soul made it a courtesy not to stare at others whenever she was in public bath situations, but a few stray glances at Leaf told her at the very least she had a nicely-shaped body, with lots of smooth, delicate curves. Soul pondered over her own body: poorly chested, only the faintest signs of a feminine shape...True, she was merely a fledgling on the path to womanhood, but...if she had a body like Leaf's, would it make any difference to Silver? She wondered dreamily what that might be like...

She shook her head briskly; why on earth was she letting herself get distracted with something so silly? The hot water must be boiling her brain.

"Fuu, that's the ticket," Leaf sighed as she plopped down on the tiled ledge that made the seat of the tub. "I gotta tell ya', after years of using public baths and Center showers, it's nice to get a nice bath all to yourself, am I right?"

"Nn," Soul said half-halfheartedly, not looking up.

Leaf raised an eyebrow and gave the younger girl a curious glance; meanwhile, Excalibur strolled over to the side of the tub where Chocobo was bathing and sat beside him, wishing to strike up a conversation. "It's Soul, right? Your name, I mean?"

"Nn, yeah."

"Right..."

They sat in silence for a while, the sounds of water dripping from the shower faucets echoing in the narrow room.

"So, which of those two guys are you sleeping with, exactly?"

Soul shot up, thoroughly surprised and taken aback, and she didn't even bother to withhold her yell of, "What the hell kind of a girl do you think I am?"

Outside in the living room, Barry and Silver looked up from the game of checkers they'd been playing (Silver was winning), and even Palmer had to cast a curious glance away from his newspaper and down the hallway toward the bath.

"Leaf must be trying to molest her," Green said with a sigh as he applied a Hyper Potion to his Arcanine in a corner, healing the wounds he'd sustained while traveling in the rain.

"Molest...?" Palmer and Barry said together, an identical dreamy tone in their voices. Their eyes strayed to the ceiling, and the faintest bit of red leaked from their noses.

"I was just kidding," Green said, his eyebrows furrowed.

Leaf laughed heartily. "I see that got your attention!" she said. "Right, now that there's two people in the conversation, let's say you tell me what's on your mind."

Soul's shoulders slackened slightly, and she turned away for decency's sake, feigning ignorance. "I don't know what you mean," she said, resting her arms on the back ledge again.

Leaf snorted. "Please, if you were any mopier, you'd think someone had died," she said, leaning on her elbow. "I know we just met and all, but I like to think I'm a good listener, when I'm not doing all the talking myself..." She took up the same position as Soul and scooted closer so their elbows almost touched. "Now, I'm going to take a shot in the dark here and assume it's...boy trouble?"

Soul said nothing, but her pinkening face gave it away.

"Yep yep, you can't hide it," Leaf said wryly. "So, if the blond one is Palmer's son, I doubt you've known him long, so it must be the red-headed one." Her grin broadened as Soul's head lifted. "So I'm right?" The younger girl nodded, and Leaf smiled. "But he seems like such a...cheerful fellow, what could be the problem there?" She laughed as Soul seemed to catch her sarcasm, and the younger girl smiled too.

So she told her. Everything, barring a few extreme details, such as Silver's connection to Giovanni and her encounter with Celebi. She explained how out of sorts she'd been around Silver lately; this quiet, mousy demeanor wasn't how she was at all, but ever since her feelings for Silver had come to the surface, she always felt so tense and awkward around him. She didn't like it...she didn't like it at all! She was usually peppier and more outgoing, but her confusion and hesitation towards confessing her feelings and her doubts about being rejected just...petrified her. Then there was all this nonsense about Red out of nowhere, and she just felt so...stressed. Leaf listened quietly, nodding occasionally and grunting an occasional, "Mm-hmm." When it had all been laid out on the table, Soul leaned her back against the edge of the tub, exhausted from all the talking.

"Well, if you're asking me, and, well," she chuckled, "you are, I'd say you really don't have much to worry about."

Soul sat up a bit, her lips parting but no words escaping them.

"About the whole awkward thing, that's all normal," Leaf said with a wave of her hand. "You think Green and I always got along so well?" She laughed when Soul's eyebrows raised. "All that yelling before, he may complain, but he knows that's one of the reasons why he stays with me. Never a dull moment and all that, you know? But when we first started dating, gaahhhh..." She leaned back. "That was an annoying time for me. Neither one of us really knew what to say or what to do. Our first date, we went to dinner and a movie, and I kid you not, neither one of us said a single thing the whole evening. Ugh, it was awful! Three-and-a-half hours of nothing being said outside of ordering food. Just us, staring off into space and avoiding eye contact the whole time. It was agonizing. So anyway, as we were walking back home, I finally just got sick of it, so I picked up a rock and clocked him in the back of the head." Soul let out a gasp, and Leaf waved it off, reassuring her, "It was a small rock, don't freak out. He didn't even bleed that much...Anyway, we ended up arguing, him about me throwing the rock and me about how the only reason I threw the rock was because he hadn't said a damn thing all night. Anyway, the argument ended up escalating, and then...well..."

"Well...what?" Soul asked when a few seconds had passed with no answer.

"Well, we kissed, naturally." Leaf grinned at Soul's expected reaction. "I know, weird, right? He ended up thanking me later for throwing that rock, because it took me striking up the courage to shatter the tension for him to realize it was the passionate side of me that he liked, and he didn't want it to be so uncomfortable, either." She snickered. "He doesn't know it, but I actually saved that rock; I keep it in a special pocket in my bag, to remind me that I should never let things get awkward between the two of us." Her eyes drifted nostalgically to the ceiling. "Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that it takes confidence to break the silence. You're only acting weird because you're unsure of yourself, and until you believe in yourself more, it's never going to get better."

There was a loud banging on the bath's door, and Green's muffled voice groused from the other side. "Leaf, you two have been in there for almost an hour! How's about letting someone else have a turn?"

"Ah, keep your pants on, because I can assure you no one in this whole apartment wants to see that!" Leaf shouted back.

"Dammit, Leaf, you get out of there right now!"

"Fine, but if I come out there as I am right now, you and the rest of the boys out there would be getting quite an eyeful! Not that it's anything you haven't seen already!"

"D...Dammi...Just hurry up!"

"Hee, I stumped him," Leaf said gleefully as she rose out of the tub and reached for her towel.

"So you really think I just need to be more confident?" Soul asked as she too garbed herself in a towel to dry off.

"Oh, most definitely," Leaf said with a sincere nod.

"And what about the whole thing with Red? What do you suppose that is?"

Leaf turned to her and grinned. "Sounds like textbook jealousy, to me."

"E...Eh?"

"Sure; you met a hot-shot trainer, a famous one at that, and he feels intimidated," she said with a shrug. She paused. "...You don't like Red too, do you?"

"What? Oh, no! I barely met him!" Soul said with several shakes of her head.

"Ah, good, because he can be such a pain in the ass sometimes..." Leaf muttered. She brightened on a happier note. "So, it seems to me like if he's jealous about you liking someone else, the only thing left for you to do is to confess how you feel! It'll stop his fears, you'll be able to act normally around him, and the two of you can be happy together knowing that there's no one else standing in the way. But first," she said with a wink, "you have to get out of the way of your heart." And with that she strolled away to get dressed.

Soul held onto the top of her towel, soaking in all the advice she'd been given. With a deep inhale, she tightened her focus. No more waiting, no more excuses. She was going to tell him how she felt, and she was going to do it tonight.

"Fat lot of good confidence does me when he keeps avoiding me..." Soul muttered into the darkness as she lied on the top bunk in hers and Leaf's guest room. The room was small, with two bunk beds on either wall, a desk lamp perched at the head of each bed. A clock on the wall ticked past midnight, and she sighed, staring at the ceiling. So she'd had a small setback; nothing to worry about. Tomorrow, they'd be heading toward Olivine, and it'd be just the two of them again. That would be the moment...that would be the best time to confess.

She felt an odd tickle in the back of her throat, and realizing it was a thirst, she rose from underneath the covers to retrieve a glass of water from the kitchen, leaving Chocobo snoozing at the foot of her bed. Quietly, she slipped out the door and into the dark hallway; the light over the bar seemed to be on in a kitchen, guiding her in what would have otherwise been a blind effort. It wasn't until she neared the end of the hall, however, that she noticed the low voices emanating from beneath the light source.

"So you're really going through with this?"

Soul recognized the masculine voice as Green's, and she sidled up to the end of the hall and peered around the corner. She was right; the voice had been Green's, and he was addressing, not-too-surprisingly, Leaf, who sat across from him at the bar.

"Yeah, why do you ask?" Leaf replied, a skeptical rise in her hushed tone.

"I'm just making sure it's what you really want to do," Green said with a shrug. "After all, you're a lot like your cousin in that regard; neither one of you likes to be cooped up for long."

"Don't compare me to that jack-ass."

"Wha...Oh jeez, don't tell me you're still bitter because he beat you the last time you saw him."

"It was close, dammit!" Leaf spat. "We were both down to our last! And besides that, he's always such an arrogant little prick when he's around me!"

"Yeah, he does that because he knows it'll get a rise out of you. And you fall for it, every time. You and I both know he's not as bad as you make him out to be." He paused, eying her seriously. "...You haven't been bad-mouthing him to people and giving them the wrong idea again, have you?"

Leaf turned and looked at the wall, murmuring, "...It may have come up, once, maybe..."

Green sighed. "Leaf..."

Soul stood frozen in place, unsure of whether she should be witnessing this lover's-quarrel. She knew it wasn't her business, but the curiosity and intrigue was too much to ignore. She decided to listen for just a while longer.

"...What're you doing?"

Ice shot down her spine, and she whirled around to come face-to-face with none other than Silver. Her jaw slackened, and she stared at him, speechless.

Selected quote from the next chapter:
"...You know I love you, right?"