Hello! It is not just Wednesday but it is the 23rd March too so that means that it is Shannon's birthday! Sometimes I hesitate about portraying James and Misty when they were younger and I smooth it out quite a lot. But with this, I tried to make it close to the people that we know they used to be. Like the title suggests, it's Misty's birthday at the time that this fic takes place. But what of James? What on earth has he done to make not only Misty feel so let down but everybody else? Well, we don't exactly find out but we discover how he makes it up to her! I hope you all enjoy but especially you, Shay. This ones for you :*
Disclaimer: I own the story! For a rare occassion, there are no OCs in this one :P
He would always show up late. Misty didn't know why that day would be any different. And Misty didn't know why she believed that he would even show after everything that had happened. But she did.
Misty couldn't fathom why she expected any different. When he still presented himself with an R painted across his chest, he was always the last one to jump out from behind a bush. Always the last one to disappear when she and her friends sent him and his friends blasting off.
James was always late. Now he was entirely absent. And Misty decided that she was gone letting him get the best of her. For the last time, she had let him near her.
Never again.
I wish this was one of those tales where I had seen all of this unfold and I stepped up to the plate all by myself. Bravery pumping through my veins that I often would channel on the battle field too, I saw unjust behaviour happening and I put a stop to it. Furthermore, the wrongdoers got their comeuppance too.
But I just didn't do any of this. Instead, I behaved in the only way I knew how on that day. With a heart becoming a rock sinking to the bottom of the ocean, Misty and I sat together in Ash's empty bedroom and looking out of the window. A cheek of mine that felt far more lifeless than usual looked out with one of my favourite people in the entire world.
I wished that I could have been brave enough to make things right. But I couldn't. I knew I couldn't. For once, it was out of my control. And it didn't drive me crazy enough to do something rash. Rather, I just rested my weary cheek against Misty and together we felt the weight of the world.
Just us against the rest of the world. And my best friend too, whenever he decided to join us once more.
Instead of being engulfed with a nauseating fire, my heart felt like a discarded toy. I absorbed Misty's feelings so much that they became very much my own. Still, through it all, I knew one thing and I knew one thing alone.
Looking at her rather than any part of the starlit sky and the swaying wind in the gentle breath of the middle of the night, I nodded my head.
She deserved the world.
Unbeknownst to either of us, someone else happened to have this thought running through his mind and it was this realisation that caused him to put one foot in front of the other and abandon his hotel room for one more night and come and make things right.
My senses must have been off that day. I didn't hear the sound of his footsteps making their way along the winding yellow stone road of Pallet Town. I certainly didn't hear those clunking of boots making their way up the gravel driveway of Ash's home either.
I can't say that I focused much of my attention on the night sky swallowing all remnants of the sun outside of the window either. All I was aware of was the aching inside of me that couldn't be ignored. However, I'm told that this is how the next few minutes unfolded.
James at long last clunked his boots against the remainder of the driveway and with deeper, hollower noises like a horse knocking it's hooves against an abandoned bridge, he took the last couple of steps towards the front door.
When he reached there, it was his immediate reaction to try and retract those steps forward he had made by curving his spine backwards, rethinking everything that he was doing. Running a hand through his hair to buy himself some more time – or some more courage through his cowardly being – he knew that he was unwelcome.
That wasn't exactly a new feeling. Though he had been trying to make a life for himself and his family since hanging up the Team Rocket uniform, a sensation that he was a puzzle piece in entirely the wrong landscape still lingered around him like a thick fog that couldn't be shifted.
Recent behaviour didn't exactly help this. Recent behaviour that he should have known far better than to engage in. Apparently he didn't.
This was another of the reasons why James knew that it was a risk even knocking there. But he reminded himself of the reason that he had left his lonely mattress and come to do the right thing.
And before he could forget about the remorse that he needed to at least be given the chance to bestow, he buckled his body forward and he wrapped his knuckles against the door. That time when the urge washed over him, he actually took those steps backwards all over again rather than just bending his spine to give himself the false notion.
His hands were rummaging through his hair again while he waited, as if he was rooting around in there for something. Something that he had misplaced, perhaps. If it was a remedy for overcoming cowardice then he wouldn't find it there.
More than just James' stomach lurched as his well-tuned ears started to hear the thump-thump-thump of footsteps from the other side of the door and he knew all too well that it wasn't a delayed echo.
It was time to confront everything that he had chosen to be a part of. Everything.
His spine grew as erect as he could manage and he forced his fingers to withdraw from locks that appeared far icier under the night sky of Kanto. His complexion began to threaten to portray the same blue hue of his locks when the door unlocked from the other side and he realised there would still be more time before he could face up to everything.
He could have been glad. He should have been glad. But he wasn't. James' spine snapped like a feeble drinking straw. His lips puckered together as a pathetic act of companionship as he prepared for the welcome from someone who used to be highly hospitable towards him.
"What do you want, James?" Delia posed her question instead of feeling the fish out of water out of the two in her dressing gown and slippers, folding her arms around herself for an extra layer of protection. Her ego didn't allow her to think such things but she knew she had the upper ground.
James attempted to encourage his posture to mirror one of the looming trees and also to act like it didn't feel like a dagger was shooting through him at the way that Delia spoke to him. And the way that she looked at him? Ouch. He didn't know how he was ever going to recover.
In the end, habit took over and those anxious, pouting lips formed a smile inside. He tried to pretend that if he acted like usual, she might fall for the bait and he would see that everything could be okay after all.
"Hi." He greeted her. Delia remained stone-faced. As well as this, James couldn't help but notice the way she tightened her grip around the pink marshmallow fluff that was enveloping him. He figured that instead of digging her shoulder into the frame of the door, she wished that she could do that to him, shunning and shoving him out. James sighed and quit the pleasantries. "Is Misty here by any chance, Delia?" He got to the point with a hand rooting back in his hair for comfort.
From the second that he uttered these words, he knew that they were the wrong choice. And not only because he wasn't foolish enough to be naïve to the fact that he probably shouldn't have been uttering anything of the sort at all.
As James heard the echoing of his own uttering swirling around his scrambled brain, he knew that his choice of enquiry wasn't going to lead the action to hurry along.
He still had some sense left apparently as, while Delia stopped digging her shoulder into the frame of her door and wishing it was his frame instead, her arms around her own pink dressing gown didn't drop an inch.
"She is." Came her answer, managing to look the lavender haired male straight in the face and with no qualms about her own lack of desire for pleasantries. Delia had nothing to feel bad about and she knew it.
James had everything to feel bad about. But she didn't love it like I would have done. There was something solemn about her firm and authoritative disposition. And that's what made feel like James was bleeding from the inside and out.
He could kid himself that he felt his oozing wound dripping inside of him. This hurt more than the invisible knife.
"May I see her?" James posed to Delia again, his spine falling into a display that was pretty faultless in spite of it all. His voice naturally softened as he chose these words, his eyebrows shooting up on his face as a manner that some would describe as sincere.
If I took a shot at it, I would have said smarmy. Delia believed that it was helpless.
But still, she didn't help him. And she proved that to the younger male as his lower lip was forced to fall into the rest of his mouth while he watched her grip around herself falter at long last. Her hands fell towards her hips and a head was shaken in disappointment.
She was disappointed rather than mad. Double ouch.
"I'm not sure that she will want to see you after everything, James." Delia replied. It rang through his ears like he was suffering from a bought of tinnitus with the way that his name was spoken. Curt. Unfriendly. He was then a stranger. "I think you need to ask Ash before you go and speak to Misty of all people." Pads of fingers fell to the forehead of Delia as she tried to bring herself the coolness of the night. "Do you not?"
James' lower lip had remained in the rest of his mouth and he was now sucking down on it, surveying the situation and more importantly, observing the words that Delia was speaking.
In his position and seeing as he had come away from his empty hotel room with his tail between his legs, he probably should have kept his mouth permanently shut unless it was to grovel and agree with whatever it was that Delia was posing.
Anything to get to where he needed to be. Anything to see Misty on her special day.
However, even if he knew more closely than anybody that his behaviour was less than desired, there were certain instances in which his morals could not be debated. Funny that (!)
James took a chance on that day and he ran the risk of getting a door slammed in his face. It wouldn't have been the first time in consecutive days.
"I think that Misty is perfectly capable of making her mind up who she is willing to give the time of day to." He answered, a subtle motion of his head speaking of the word 'ma'am' even if his lips did not even shape them, let alone suggest. James made it important to him to be respectful even if he was in disagreement. "Shall we let her decide?"
Not that he thought it, but his level of respect that he was offering could have changed Delia's whole approach towards him. But it didn't.
Instead, she actually seemed to grow all the more impatient. And if she had still been hugging her arms around herself then her touch most certainly would have failed, falling right down towards the ground.
Delia let out an exhalation of breath that gave the midnight breeze of the sleepy town in Kanto a run for its money.
"I just don't think-" she tried to begin. A part of me still to this day wishes I knew what she would have gone on to say. But the truth is I am part of the reason that this moment got cut short.
You see, when James had uttered her name for the second lady while on the doorstep trying to get somewhere with Delia, the night time breeze had whispered just enough and carried all sound of speech in through the open window of Ash's bedroom.
Misty and I fell away from our position of my cheek sinking into her shoulder and we looked at each other from the second that we heard a voice. And when we noticed the two stances remaining, in the instant that I realised who it was, it quickly began to dawn on her as well.
Though a voice rung through her ears and a scream shouted through her veins that she should have stayed put, a warrior could be found in her that was able to ignore it and she was able to open the door of Ash's bedroom, heading out onto the landing.
She needed to know if she was right or not. She needed to know if she was correct or the wind had been whispering a lie.
She was shown that while nature was not really on anybody's side, it certainly wasn't against her either. Misty knew that it wasn't too bold or presumptuous to assume that she was the 'her' in question as a voice that sometimes felt like going back to a place she had always known and sometimes made her want to pack her bags away from there spoke through the open door of the house.
She certainly hadn't meant to cut Delia off. But when the sound rattled through her and it caused her to latch onto the top of the bannister with ghostly knuckles, she knew that she had to draw at least one card.
Misty called down with a storm in her voice that had developed from the pit of her stomach from the second that noises had travelled in through the open window and she had recognised them.
"It's fine, Mrs Ketchum, you can send him up." She interrupted the conversation, her grip around the bannister being more than just to have the smallest outlet for her pent up rage. Misty needed to steady herself as it dawned on her that he had actually showed up after all. Still, she wasn't welcoming him with open arms, of course, and she showed this by the hiss that escaped from the front of her teeth as she added, "Let's just hope he doesn't get a door slammed in his face."
James showed off an appearance like a rabbit in the headlights from the moment that a voice equally familiar to him called down the stairs. In the exact same way as was for her, her voice in return could cause him to want to succumb or to run entirely in the opposite direction and never look back.
He certainly felt both of those things but not in equal measures there and then! And despite it all, he looked over to Delia with eyebrows breaking the distance with his hairline and for comfort as he heard the second part of Misty's words.
Delia had a far contrasting reaction. James was shown almost a completely different person in the second that she turned away from him, blinking, her hands softly sliding into the even softer material of her dressing gown pockets out of habit.
Seemingly, she couldn't have been further from feeling brushed the wrong way at being interrupted in the way that she had.
"Misty, dear, are you certain?" Delia wanted to confirm, not taking a step away from practically guarding the front door but her neck craning upwards. She couldn't see Misty. But she knew where her voice was coming from.
Due to their lacking ability to be face to face with each other, Delia couldn't recognise the brave nod that was the commander of Misty's gestures there and then. But I did.
As I lingered in the doorway of Ash's bedroom, ready to guard that threshold in the same way that Mrs Ketchum was doing down the stairs, I saw the swallow that silently erupted in Misty's throat as she knew the right thing was to nod her head.
Yes, she was certainly sure that she wanted it to be up to James whether he decided to come on up after everything. She half expected him to change his mind, running in a complete U-turn like he often did. No, she almost wholly anticipated this from him.
But Delia wasn't on the same page. And this is why she was forced to step aside almost as warily as I could have shown in the moments. After a couple seconds of silence and James composing himself, reassuring himself that this is exactly where he wanted to be, he invited himself back into the hallway of the place that had once been a home.
Misty disappeared behind me and back into Ash's bedroom from the second that she heard those footsteps that she could read almost as perfectly as her own. Because she had bobbed backwards and out of sight, it was only Delia and not even myself who saw the way that James stopped along the way, unable to resist torturing himself by gazing into the room at the front of the Ketchum Household and where his family used to all pile in, all together.
They still could, if only he hadn't ruined things in the way that he had done. And his wife and young children had only just made their escape to his grandparent's house so there was still very much remnants of all that had been.
James managed to resist bending down to knee level and picking up the galaxy adorned blanket that one of his children in particular had left there in his haste. Maybe it was for the best. If that sweet, innocent smell had travelled into his nostrils then his knees would surely have buckled and he would not be able to straighten himself up, heading off to make things right with one of the top people in his list that he needed to do that for.
His memories saw the back of him. He creaked up the stairs, heading up there to find Misty. I was finally riddled with joy rather than only able to wallow in my own sadness when James came face to face with me first, my body posture acting as if I was on the battle field, on the cusp of letting loose a powerful electric attack.
It felt even better when James froze from the minute that he saw me, his eyebrows blending with his hairline and residing there for quite some time.
I was forced to be not too disappointed when Misty's voice from behind called to me. She was even further behind me all over again. She had sat back down and was looking out of the window once more.
"He's not worth it, Pikachu." Misty told me. Very much an animalistic sensation of disagreement shot through me like a white hot rod from the second that I heard this. But it dissipated from the moment that her tone of voice registered with me.
I didn't need to turn around to know that she was dejectedly pulling her legs towards her chest and resting her chin down onto her knees for comfort. Realisation washed over me like a puddle of the shore lapping at me on the beach. No, he wasn't worth it. But Misty always would be. And she needed me. So I needed to be there for her.
Maybe I relaxed my stance and I might have let James off but I certainly didn't turn my back on him as I moved away from him. And the look that I gave him was very telling.
He responded to my gaze of cut glass and my canines digging prominently into the softness of my lips by still not lowering his eyebrows away from his hairline. But he did do a brave thing. Or rather, he did do a stupid thing.
In just the seconds after I left him in my wake to join Misty, he started to follow me into the bedroom. And he loitered there, both feet well past the threshold of the room but with a spine that longed to curve away from every inch of the surroundings that reeked of nothing but my very best friend in the whole world.
Because I looked at him in return with the exact same manner, I believed that he was surveying the surroundings with a look of disgust. It wasn't until I looked for a bit longer that I realised he was waiting for the owner of the bedroom to spring out from behind a corner and potentially ambush him.
James' words confirmed this after not much time at all, although he tried to play it off like he was merely starting the conversation going.
"Ash not around tonight?" he asked, though once his walls started to lower just enough, his words were already pretty obvious from the way that he had been let up to the bedroom and how it had been Delia to answer the door instead.
His shoulders moved up and down in his leather jacket before doing so a second time in order for his hands to disappear into the pockets of his jeans. His legs were concealed in a shade of blue that had seemed to adopt the icy quality of the night time sky.
Misty's kneecaps still hadn't broken the distance away from her chest. And she preferred to look outwards at the world rather than back behind her, at the person who had let her down.
Although she felt me close next to her again, she couldn't unclench and she couldn't let her own encasement down. Her nose was drawing upwards, slowly breaking the distance with the stars that were concealed by the rooftop of the Ketchum residence as she tried to compose herself.
"He's at Gary's." Misty answered in these words. She said no more and she said no less. That was it.
I remained alert by resting my cheek against the side of her knee cap. My body was close to hers but my stance was ready and I was watching James. Not that I did anything. Sadly, I was remaining all bark and no bite.
I still, however, wanted to punch the expression off James' face as he reacted to what he heard. His lips pouched together and directed themselves towards the side of his mouth, his head thumping slowly up and down and causing a stray sprig of hair to unravel.
He didn't hesitate to let go of the urge to hold his tongue.
"He's left you here all by yourself?" James posed. I felt as red hot from the inside as could be portrayed on the natural blush of my cheeks. I believed that he knew exactly what he was doing. "On your birthday?"
It wasn't difficult for me to gather that it was equally as much of Misty's emotions as my own when I looked at her for more than a second and I watched her nostrils silently flare in response to this. The base of her neck and the beginnings of her collar bones started to appear mottled.
Somehow – I didn't know how she did it – but she managed to resist the urge to point out to James that he himself hadn't even bothered to show once on her birthday.
"The celebrations are over now and he deserves to spend some time with his friends." Misty still snapped. She loathed the way that she was feeling while defending Ash. She was white hot on the inside and it wasn't getting any better from James' lingering stare in her peripheral vision. "What?" she decided to address that look, boldly turning around over her shoulder and glancing at him. Misty guessed his reasons before he had a chance to speak of them in confirmation. "Some couples trust each other."
James allowed air out of his nostrils to escape but he would have to muster a more powerful one than he displayed if he had any hope of putting out Misty's fire.
It dawned on him that she hadn't even given him a chance to explain the look that he offered her. Then again, it wasn't as if she had mistaken everything that he had been thinking on in the inside. But still, he thought to himself, did she really have to punch that far below the belt?
Apparently she had. And I for one applauded her. I relished furthermore in the way that she turned to look back away from James all over again, her nose practically joining the curtain poles up above with how high her nose was hanging.
"So how were your celebrations?" James pondered next. His tactic was seemingly changing the subject. Misty felt the heat raging in her still and it didn't subside for a single second. Meanwhile, the lavender haired male did something that I knew was really stupid given the way things had been going thus far.
He didn't just do something stupid. He did something rage inducing. He broke the distance with Misty and not only did he walk behind me, but he shot his boot outwards and nudged me to the side and sat down right with her. He took my space!
I at long last saw crimson. But I knew that I couldn't do anything because though, dear God, I would have never admitted it back then but I sort of agreed with him back outside. It was up to Misty to ultimately decide how she wanted to proceed.
And she apparently wanted to give him somewhat of the benefit of the doubt and I saw that from the way that she didn't push him away from him, toppling him over straight away. She instead gave him a look that warned him not to come any closer. This paired with her other body language told him to tread carefully.
At long last, Misty replied to him. A part of her wanted to tell him that her birthday had been horrid. But she didn't want to bestow him with that satisfaction.
"They were fine." She said. She might have been able to resist shoving him away from being next to her but her tone was laced with the bitterness of if he had offered her a forgotten boiled sweet from the pit of his pocket. Following this, however, even she didn't want to copy him by lying. As she reached her hand out towards the top of my head for comfort, she was able to answer truthfully. "We had a birthday tea. That was nice. Mrs Ketchum made the most unbelievable cake. Gary brought along a karaoke machine."
Seeing how chiselled and intricately carved James' jawline was as he turned to the side to look at Misty, listening to her, made me want to go feral on him.
But I still managed to do, not exactly the right thing, but the decent thing by keeping my actions to myself and just screaming hateful words towards him inside my head instead.
I watched James bob his own head as he heard Misty's words, inadvertently mirroring her as his blue jeans were pulled towards his own chest, a zipper from his black leather jacket bedding into his hip bone.
"Anything else?" James asked. Sarcasm didn't latch onto his reply from the way that Misty had turned her birthday events into a bit of a shopping list. But I couldn't admit to myself that it was probably because he perversely cared and wanted to hear it all.
Needless to say, Misty would never have dreamed herself to speculate this either. From her point of view, he didn't have space in his mind for this at all. He certainly didn't have space in his heart for her either.
Regardless, she engaged with him. With a shrug and with kneecaps at last freeing themselves towards the blank skirting board of Ash's bedroom. I wasn't informed but I garnered anyway, that this was one of the hardest things that she had had to do on that day.
"Nothing else really to report." spoke Misty, trying not to react to the twinging sensation in the back of her legs as they got used to stretching away from her after for so long thinking they were becoming part of her torso with how long they had lingered there. "Birthdays are a bit lame, really, aren't they?" she asked James. She didn't need him to say anything. Because with a flicking motion of her hand through her bangs, she added: "None of mine have ever been special."
In other words, the person who took up the most room in her heart had never consistently done something that made all of her other birthdays worth experiencing.
If it wasn't Ash prioritising a big battle on that day instead then it was James ruining everything for everybody in the days before and then not showing up on her special day at all. She preferred not to remember the ones from when she was a kid.
While she was grateful for the people who had made an effort on that particularly miserable birthday, it was hard to truly enjoy when you had kept one of your eyes on the clock for the entire day and listened out for the heel clacking of tired old boots.
For once, James misunderstood but he thought he understood. He backed Misty up, agreeing with her.
"Birthdays are more for everybody else." James concurred, his head going the extra mile from turning to look right at her and his neck sloping and causing a slant in his features too. He became Misty's mirror and shot his own boots towards the skirting board that needed painting. "All they are is getting another year older."
Misty's own lap was the most interesting thing to her then and I believed that she wasn't going to say anything. I guessed that with the way that her chin broke the distance with her legs, she was going to start inspecting the holes in her fish net tights so closely that she would be unable to resist poking her finger through one dent in particular.
I was wrong. It was shown to me that even though on that day I felt closer to her than ever, you could never guess how anybody was going to proceed.
James had only just started to tell himself that it had been going better than he could've possibly anticipated. They were… having a conversation? And Misty was smiling at him? There and then, I noticed the curve that was decorating her lips as she was choosing to look at James equally as much as he had been looking at her.
She slapped him with the truth. And what a slap it was!
"And yet here you are." She started, then not quite committing fully to the squint of her left eye that would later come. "Getting older but certainly not wiser. And somehow becoming, more idiotic."
Misty finally let the squinting of one particular eye of hers loose and following that, her lips pressed together in a tight line and she looked away from James. Within those gestures, she committed to not ever looking at him ever again. And at the same time, James made a silent pact to never get his hopes up ever again.
It was like an artist had come along and painted an entirely different expression on his face in the few seconds that he reacted to what Misty had said to him. He promptly found himself looking away and shaking his head from side to side, air rushing out from his parted lips.
What a fool. What a fool, he told himself. He believed that things were starting to be okay. But she was just as pissed with him as he had feared. She had been angry when she bombarded him with texts. Furious with him via the voicemails she had left.
But nothing could have prepared him for face to face.
He did a brave (stupid) thing by asking her this question,
"You're really mad at me this time, aren't you?" he enquired, not chancing looking at her but needing to run a hand through his hair to console himself. From the corner of his eyes, he acknowledged Misty's expression of sarcastic disbelief that captured her. His jaw clenched together in response. He showed a jolt of his own bonfire that he could be known for. "What was I supposed to do, Misty? Tell me, what was I supposed to do?" James posed to her. Misty was having none of that. She wasn't going to fall for that trap again. She heard his sighs out of his nose and his lips too as he tried to compose himself. If she had looked at him, his cheekbones would have been sucking in more than she had ever seen. "I was torn."
Misty appeared to choke on her own air. She had promised herself that she wouldn't look at him but she failed. At least she drummed into herself that if she was to look at him then it could be with nothing but disdain.
She succeeded!
She retorted to him promptly, eyes full of disbelief though she managed to disguise it as simmering rage.
"Oh, torn between what, James?" Misty wondered. It was rushing through him again. The sound of hearing his name but not in the manner of once before. It instead being used to direct his attention to where it needed to be. To remorse. "Who have you been-"
Seemingly, James swallowed Misty's brewing hostility and this could be seen from the way that in the seconds after he gulped in the air, he responded to her.
He snapped in very much his own way.
"I haven't!" Was what he started by answering rather than spitting the words 'no one'. As sure as night followed day, he was preparing to say more than that but the squeaking noise from his leather jacket that erupted after he managed this was enough to encourage him to cool it. He realised he needed to think wiser, proving some of Misty's prior words incorrect. "What was I to do?" James bought himself some time by asking, his exhalation being far feebler the next time around. "If I showed my face here and people found out then I would have been screwed. If I ended up not allowed to see my children because of this…"
This was it. This was the moment that did it. Well, almost. It was one of the moments that certainly did it.
The truth was Misty wanted to despise James. She wanted to reiterate to herself that he always showed up late and if he ever showed up at all, it was carelessly done. She wanted to not care in the same way. She wanted there to be nothing that he could say that would make her truly listen.
But then he said that. And though she shook her head, she couldn't deny to herself that she hadn't heard a thing.
Misty's legs draw backwards towards her forlornly beating chest. She might have let her words slip. But she was not going to reveal to him the pricking liquid itching at her eyelids.
"Well then maybe you should have just stayed away for good…" she tried to let this be just a suggestion. She tried not to get attached to any of the words that she was saying and to just lace them with a nonchalant shrug. She wanted more than anything to distract herself from the ripping in her heart that was a far blunter weapon than a knife by swirling her finger in the dust on the wooden floor below them both. "I was doing just fine with things being that way."
That was as James feared. I wanted to feel glee when I cast my gaze away from Misty for a couple of seconds and towards him instead. And not that I dared allow myself to realise that in the moment but looking back, I didn't feel glee at all.
I saw James' greatest fear washing over him. He had decided not to show up on the day of a massive milestone, it was true. He had his reasons why he had done this. At first, he had told himself that it was the kindest thing to do – for everyone.
And as the day progressed and the lonesome hotel room got the better of him, he started to wonder – no, he started to agonise – that maybe it was the most wonderful thing that he could have done for Misty.
She didn't have to pretend that she even wanted him around. She could be free to laugh with Ash and embrace him like she wanted and to goof off with Gary and make fun of Tracey for the way that he wore a decorative headband just for her.
All of this realisation washed over James and he was far from being the water that licked at the shoreline at that point. He had become the porcelain and powdery sand, as pale as it as well. Maybe he had done not even the right thing. But he had done the best thing.
Still, he hoped that that wasn't true. He hadn't wanted to be absent on her birthday, not really.
He had to admit that to her during those moments and as after he managed to encourage some colour back towards his cheeks with a swallow and a lick of his lips.
"I wasn't doing fine with things being that way." James confessed. After the wetting of his lips, it was as though that even I could see things a bit more as they might have been and I gathered that he wanted to utter an infinite amount of things but didn't have the nerve. Or the heart. "I…" Somehow, he didn't have the courage to tell her it was like he had been missing a limb all day. Her opposing response could have easily crushed him. "I really wanted to see you… I always do but I especially wanted to today."
James' head buckled downwards and I watched. Part of me almost wanted him to bite the bullet and fully rest his head downwards on Misty's shoulder because it would have given me such a message that he cared that even I couldn't deny it.
Whether or not I accepted it, let alone allowed it to prevail was another matter!
He instead pulled his knees back towards his torso, guarding his silently thumping heart, and rested his chin down towards his kneecaps instead. He waited for Misty to reject him. I did as well.
Looking back at those few, fleeting moments, I'm torn whether or not I wanted there to be a dismissal or not.
"Well, don't beat yourself up about it too much because you have other people to do that for you…" Misty began and as she spoke these words, she managed to look over at James no matter how brief it was. It was certainly not the look he was hoping for. Or the next best thing. He seemingly took it on the chin, however. "There's always more birthdays."
She had prepared to unintentionally be James' reflection as in the moments after her own legs broke the distance back with her chest again, her chin was dropping down to seek refuge on the bones of her knees. And, almost as soon as she had fully made her venture there, his was lifting back up all over again.
Typical!
He hadn't wanted to have his hopes in the night sky after the last time. But when he took his time and it dawned on him these words couldn't be deciphered in any other way, he couldn't resist hesitantly looking over at Misty and wondering.
"Does this mean that you'll still want me around in another year…?" he asked. He continually tried not to allow that fluttering sensation take flight in the pit of his stomach and make its way up towards his throat. But James surrendered entirely.
There started to be the smallest of elevations quirking up the corner of his mouth.
Because she knew that a smile from James was very much like the sunlight in the middle of a day which could be the polar opposite of the nightfall that we were experiencing, Misty made a great effort not to look directly at his building countenance.
And furthermore, she couldn't allow it to blossom to its entirety. If anybody was going to put a dampener on things then it was certainly going to be her. Even on her birthday!
"Don't push it." she warned, a hint of that rage that was often simmering below the surface rearing its head and showing itself to James. He responded with silence and eyes like saucers. She still didn't fill her vision with him. She knew better than to while his eyes looked like that. "You've behaved disgracefully these past few days and I'm not going to act like I condone any of it in the slightest." If James believed that her harshness had stopped with just the first sentence, he had another thing coming! However, maybe it was how he absorbed all that and accepted it into his continuously round eyes that it encouraged Misty to make a confession of her own. "But that doesn't mean I appreciate when you go AWOL…"
Misty told herself that she wouldn't do that. That she wouldn't allow him to get close to him. That she wouldn't believe a thing that he said. And that she certainly wouldn't look into those eyes of it.
But it seemed that now they had both got a bit of their true feelings off of their chest, the slate had been cleaned between the both of them. It was certainly far from being spotless. But a new beginning was brewing.
And at the start of this new chapter, Misty believed that it was okay to try one last time at looking into James' eyes. She must've been glad when she made this bold move. Because it actually made him duck his head in remorse after meeting her eyes for a few, fleeting seconds.
He had received that message loud and clear.
"I should have phoned you at the very least, I know…" James agreed, not needing more than a split second to fathom that it was far too much and too soon to make any physical contact with Misty. He, however, still needed the comfort so he went searching for that by running a hand through his hair.
She watched his gestures, silently observing the way that his strands reacted to his digits, as if part of him was a mighty source and his sea of hair was parting at a single command. Misty watched silently. She mused to herself.
I almost saw these thoughts form themselves in her mind's eye long before they formed on her previously puckered lips.
Her mouth moved away from the side of her face to speak her mind.
"You should have." Misty didn't beg to differ, the smallest of knots that formed between her eyebrows, tugging them close together being a far cry from any disposition that she might have had previously. It was her turn to show off a strong side profile as her eyes battled for dominance and won by looking at James. "You can't keep letting people down like this and behaving in ways that you know are far beneath you."
As I watched this and I listened to this more and more, I knew very well that James could've swallowed a percentage of the fire that I had once felt burning in my belly and it could have caused him to grow very irate at this, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. His hairs could have unfurled for a different reason.
But they did not. He was not a beginner at reading people and as he felt able to look at Misty too, he saw the seriousness tugging at her brow and even capturing hold of her irises too.
All the same, he reacted in one of the only ways that he knew how. He made a joke out of it. Even while his mouth had presented itself in an equally serious, and accepting too, straight line.
"Is that your way of re-establishing to me that I really do need to grow up?" James asked and Misty nodded. She didn't bother to hold back her head motion. Copying her example, he didn't swallow back what words wanted to come next out of him either. "Maybe you should have used your birthday wish on that."
And with that, physical contact between the two of them was finally made. My stomach lurched as it wasn't even Misty to put this forth after deciding that she was warming up to James again even though she had promised herself that she never would again.
James took a chance by nudging his shoulder against hers. And he knew that he had taken a chance. He could clearly see it written on the younger female's face as she turned to look at him and her bottom prepared to wriggle too, wanting to give him an action-filled warning by adding distance between them.
But in that moment, James showed that he had something up his sleeve. Or rather, he had something else in his pocket. It became apparent that Misty didn't even need to retort to him by reassuring him that she wished for something far better after everybody had sung to her on her birthday and encouraged her to make a wish and blow out the candles.
James proved to her that she always had the opportunity for more wishes. Out of his pocket and wrapped in a strawberry patterned napkin came a slice of cake with icing that had dripped all down the sides and started to sully through the cotton material. It had probably soiled his jeans pocket too!
Misty didn't comment on this part, though. She made her voice known in some other way.
"You expect me to be able to make a wish on that?" she switched her stance in between staring right at him and her eyes flickering down to whatever kind of parcel that was supposed to be.
For half a second while Misty furrowed her eyebrows closely together, James flicked his own gaze between her and the wrapped slice of birthday cake that he was holding. But, he realised something, and he made this known with an uttering that escaped from his lips.
He kidded himself that she was wondering where on earth the candle was. He reached into his other pocket and pulled out exactly that – a blue one to match the ocean that she could surely submerge herself in for always if given half the chance – as well as his cigarette lighter to ignite it.
For another half a second, Misty wanted to prove to James that she was still well past his games by warning him that he better not start smoking in Ash's bedroom. But James ended up interrupting her without really meaning to. And as he did so, he knocked enough air out of her lungs that it was as though they had ended up sharing a cigarette after all.
Over my dead body!
"Sorry it's not a whole cake. This is the best I could do from the hotel café." He told Misty, a smile unable to stop itself from doing the brave thing by etching across his lips. Flick. After revealing the slice of cake fully away from the napkin, he had ignited his lighter and decorated the top of the blue candle wick with a flame. That time, his chin did take the chance by resting down on Misty's shoulder. "Make your wish now. Whatever you want it to be."
Misty reminded herself that she hadn't wasted her wish on his mere appearance on her birthday so why would she think there and then that her wish had come true? But something had come true, hadn't it?
There James was, displaying his company in her presence all over again and bringing something to her and resting his chin down on her shoulder.
So why was that touch making her stomach lurch? Why was his touch in far less innocent of ways usually able to fill her with butterflies, but today even this was making her go on the defence?
Misty didn't know. But in that second, she attempted to shove him away at long last.
"I'm not a child." She sulked, snatching her hand back towards herself after it had left being flat out, and palm first against the white t-shirt that James was wearing underneath his black leather jacket.
Apparently the lavender haired male didn't think this of her. And he seemingly didn't think anything about her. For once, he didn't really take her change in mood seriously and all over again – showing this was a reoccurring theme of his on her birthday – he took a risk by carrying on even with her lack of participation.
"Fine, I guess I'll have to make the wish for you." He told her with a shrug and whether this was a ploy or not to get more reactions out of her, he garnered exactly this from her. He could feel her narrowed eyes bedding into him as she tried to tell him without spitting out words that maybe he should wish for himself, and wish he knew her well enough to make one for her. James' eyelids draw together so even if he caught onto this, he didn't catch onto it for long. "I wish for Misty that even if people who want to be around can't always be, that she feels loved by them anyway."
And with that, Misty's readable gaze from a few seconds ago faded away into something different. It didn't switch into something all that unique! She still looked at James with invisible knitting needles sewing her eyebrows together and with scepticism narrowing her own eyelids. As James' eyes fell open all over again, he couldn't deny that he saw this within her.
But still, it rolled off him like water off a duck's back and he held the cake closer to her, encouraging her to blow the candle out whether she agreed with his wish or not. She thought that it was pretty stupid. But she blew it out anyway.
And before he could get his hopes up that this made them friends all over again, she made sure to warn him before he got any ideas.
"Next time you get the urge to say anything gross like that again, just shut your mouth instead. Or at the very least fill it with cake and then shut up." Misty apprised James, her tone not inflecting or declining through any part of her sentence.
To go along with it, her eyes appeared weary. This was because she was serious and as I relaxed enough by the skirting board to allow my eyes to start to see things in double, the last thing on my mind was that I was proud.
While James was making it out of the end of that day alive which didn't make me exactly happy, at least Misty had things in her control. And that made me apathetic enough to make up for the other thing.
And apparently, James was still content to go along with Misty words even if they had been pretty insulting towards him! Moreover, he didn't hesitate to go along with what she said because he knew that, if she had spoken something, then she must've surely meant it.
"Well okay then." He murmured in the moments before he complied. Following this, he didn't have the chance to say much else because rolling running a delicate finger along the edge of the cake and swiping free some icing and putting it into his mouth; he prepared to take a massive bite of cake.
Misty was stunned! She was used to him doing what she said but she thought that with the way that they had behaved with each other on that day then he might have tried another tactic.
She really longed to wriggle away from him there and then. But she managed to resist that urge and reprimanded him with words instead.
"Oi!" she started, a part of him that she had taken away from him and claimed for herself sounding out from her parted lips in that second. "It's my birthday cake!"
First of all, James continuously pretended to take that massive bite before he mimicked being equally as gobsmacked as the younger female but in different ways. Eyes portraying the same wide roundness as the cake had surely been before it had been trimmed into slices; James looked at her and tried to show no remorse.
He attempted to show Misty that after everything, he was going to eat it and why not. But her own stare faltered. Her eyelashes threatened to wriggle before clapping together. And it was this that made James relinquish. He might have laughed! But he still relinquished. And he handed the cake back over to Misty permanently before settling with his cheek against her shoulder for good.
"It's all yours." He told her with words as well as with actions. She was holding the sticky and no longer alight parcel in her hold, it was true, but she still didn't quite wholly relax. Her shoulders didn't droop downwards with James still against one of hers until he had spoken these words to her. "Happy Birthday, Misty."
After James spoke these words to her, from his position lulling against her shoulder, he knew that he was going to witness the cake touching her lips and unlike how it was when other's pulled her in close, he didn't have that white hot, uneasy feeling seeping into his skin.
In fact, as he watched her and prepared to watch her enjoying the treat, he knew that was exactly what he wanted for her on that special day. So James prepared to do something of his own accord.
My foolish apathy had blurred my eyes shut at that point so I was sure what I was seeing was a mirage. It was surely a dream.
James lifted his cheek away from Misty's shoulder but it wasn't to break the distance between the two of them. One hand flat against the wood of the floor and with strength in his elbows to aim himself higher, he intended to lean in and kiss her on the forehead after wishing her happy birthday.
But, you see, Misty had decided that she wanted another kind of sweetness against her lips on her birthday. She had discarded the parcel for the time being down onto the wooden floor where I was snoozing and James' hand was resting.
And because he paused right before making contact with her forehead, he caught onto the way that she was looking back at him at long last. And not only was she doing just this but with a motion that was invisible to anybody but to him, she was encouraging him.
James knew better than to let a girl down on her birthday two times in a row. Eyes fluttering shut like he was preparing to do more than just dream, he leaned in and their lips pressed together.
Time is funny in dreams and if I had been aware that it was reality, then I would have known that this occurred for just a split second before the two of them fell away. They didn't fall away from each other entirely, however.
Pinkness taking over his cheekbone that was like the blush of a rose, James planted that cheek of his back against the shoulder of Misty. The two of them both couldn't help but smile, though the girl of the two attempted to conceal it with two fingers and the ducking motion of a head too.
James didn't bother to conceal it. And it seemed that their pecking of their lips together encouraged him to say one more final heartfelt thing on that night.
He had had a lot of making up to do. But this was the kind of thing that he wanted to say all along, if only he had had the courage to do it sooner.
"I hope that your eighteenth year brings you everything that you could possibly wish for." James told Misty and as his cheek lounged on her shoulder and with part of his own shoulder and his torso bedded into the back of her, his hand reached out and a single finger tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
She tried not to shiver as she felt this contact. But she looked at the face of James who didn't want anything – who wasn't expecting anything, he just wanted to be there for her on her day and wished he had been all along – she knew that it was pointless giving into her urges.
And then she went on to act upon more of her urges. I surely would have put a stop to it if I was awake. But I wasn't. And this is what occurred on the night of Misty's birthday and technically the first full day of her being eighteen.
Misty knew without reaching deeply at all that no part of her had wished for James on her birthday. But it seemed that although she didn't wish for him, she had been granted with him. And when that notion washed over her, she realised that she wanted to be in no other company.
And after she had heard these final words from him, she knew that their second long kiss wasn't enough.
While I slumbered and my sleeping mind was filled with gladness that Misty was in control, she showed me and she showed James too just how much she really was. He felt himself being pulled back towards her by the collar of his leather jacket and before even he could realise what was going on, he was shown.
As the two of them melted together and their lips found each other in more of an interlocking way, becoming the lost puzzle pieces of each other, James' hand paused in mid-air before finally relinquishing on the back of her neck.
I snoozed. Misty took control. James was able to grant wishes. Misty was able to seize them. I should have stopped it. But I didn't. This unfolded while I slept.
Misty not only got her wish but out of the window went the beginning of our story.
He would always get the best of her. He would always get the worst of her. They would get the best and worst of each other. They would pull away. They would get nearer. Their story was going to unfold either way. Wishes were going to get severed. And they were going to be granted.
Birthdays were going to be shared together. And on that particular one was when Misty first knew: James had once held her hand so fiercely that he had become her extra limb. And it would take many more birthdays for that to sever.
If at all.
The End.
There you go! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed :) The romantic relationship of James and Misty will always be close to my heart even if some areas of it are a little iffy! I really had fun with this one and especially going back and editing it to how I really wanted it to be. I hope you have a wonderful birthday, Shannon, and as always, I so thank you for being a creative partner of mine and honestly one of the main reasons I am still so excited to write about this world we have created. I know James and Misty is one of your faves too so of course I had to write this for you :) Thanks again for reading and I will be back on the 28th to update Dear Darlings so see you then!
Amy signing out :3