Tilting her face and bating her breath, a gradually tiring May Maple teetered on the brink of surrender to the nighttime lull of the waves lapping gently against the shore.
...Hoenn Sea, regardless of time and distance, was never not a source of tranquility for her.
Only now did she realize just how parched she had been for it.
Peering deeply into the horizon, where sea and sky greeted each other, she felt her eyes weary further under all that eye make-up and shut them tightly, relishing the darkness as it drew the curtains on her eyelids and inundated her vision. As briefly as it happened, doing so seemed to ease the stress on her eyes, and she soon found herself generously taking in the surrounding night scene once more.
...Hoenn Sea, boosting turquoise waters turned teal and foam seemingly crystalline under the shadow of moonless midnight, was never not a place of beauty to her.
And drink it all in she did, much to her satisfaction.
The same satisfaction brought about much needed healthy respiration, especially a long, painful night of being around heavily perfumed socialites. Exhalation now emptied her lungs of air long staled, whereas inhalation had it swelling anew with breath so fresh that she could taste the distinct tanginess of sea salt as well as weather-beaten debris.
...Ah. Delicious.
After having spent the majority of the night feeling uncomfortably stiff all over and teetering on the brink of exhaustion, it certainly felt good to stretch now. Popping the last of her joints and giving her limbs one last shake, May groaned heartily.
Now, freshly alive and awash with the very relief to have stubbornly eluded her for the good part of her waking hours today, she eagerly sought to relieve them, for she had lived both a waking dream and a living nightmare.
She had gotten to enjoy quality time with her loved ones in a waking dream.
She had been accosted, openly paraded and put at the mercy of the public masses in a living nightmare.
...And what a nightmare she had lived, socializing outside of her circle, opening the dance floor, delivering speeches and whatnot, all while hogging a spotlight she cared little for.
But that was all over now.
She was no longer Champion May Maple now. She was no longer required to be Champion May Maple now.
She was May Maple, just May Maple now and here, at a time and in a place which neither valued nor exaggerated the frivolity of titles and accomplishments.
...And because she was just May Maple now, she was able to do this.
Restfully, heavily, she plopped her bottom on sand, relishing how it prickled her flesh through her clothing and sighing aloud.
Leaning her head back, she felt the sea breeze graze her face, enjoying the brief respite its refreshing dampness brought to her parched skin, especially after it had turned unpleasantly dry to the touch from enduring a long, unhappy struggle with cosmetics over the duration of tonight's Ball.
She blinked her eyes, scrunched her face and resisted the urge to rub her hands all over it.
Itch and sleep wrestled hard, with the latter gradually overtaking her as it already did a peacefully restful Mossdeep City.
...Then, atop the stripe of sloping shore, Steven Stone appeared after a night of grappling with absence and presence.
Wordlessly, he began striding towards her, expression and body language purposeful.
Entering her peripheral vision were his shoes, black leather and encrusted with foreign sediment. Walking him over to her from afar were his legs, long and upside down in elegant motion. Grasping a generously steaming mug was a hand and cradling a duvet was another arm.
Stopping at May Maple's side was Steven Stone.
"...Hey."
"Hey," May volleyed back cheerily, adding cheekily, "Mr. Thief."
"Well, well, aren't you the pot calling the kettle black?" Steven rivaled her cheek, adding cheerily, "Tell me, who had been caught by who not long ago trespassing on whose property, eh?"
"Oh, I don't know if you're 'kettle'."
"I'll let you know when I do then." Away from May's upturned, jauntily smirking face and at her loosely clasped hands he looked, gesturing pointedly, "Hand. Give it."
Wordlessly, she obliged, extending her left one to latch cold, sandy fingers firmly onto the mug's handle. Absorbed in the heat and aroma emanating from the mug, she neither spoke nor looked as Steven quietly busied himself with sitting down and arranging the duvet snugly over their lower bodies.
Across sand sea foam spread.
On ceramic a fingernail tapped.
Into a hand someone coughed.
Enduring the distraction of chilly night and warm steam, the unspoken desire to speak seemed to simmer forever, only to abruptly erupt.
"...I've never told you where in the house to look for the hot chocolate!" Steven, blotchily flushed and visibly ill at ease, exclaimed.
...One need not look at the man's face or hear the girl sniggering to suffer the secondhand embarrassment.
"No..." With more snark than necessary, she decided to put him out of his misery. "No, you did not."
Very much against his will, the flushing and flinching worsened to the point of defensiveness. "So, how-"
"...I'd bought the hot chocolate, alright? I'd bought it fresh, then restocked your pantry with it after having had to toss out all of your expired instant coffees!"
"May, please..." On the brink of humiliation, Steven could not tell if it was his voice or sheer mortification that was doing the choking. "Please, tell me you haven't been stopping by specially to... to tidy up."
Now, it was May who was doing the choking.
"I-I mean," Given starkly away by the fierce flushing and rapid blinking, she came clean altogether, "o-occasionally..."
Steven shot up straight and agape, stuttering incredulously, "So, you did!"
"Someone had to! Your house was getting awfully gross from disuse! There were spiders, colonies of them, crawling and cobwebbing everywhere! There were food and drink going to waste! And your rocks! Your precious rock collections needed to be taken care of lest something bad happened, like a burglary o-or..."
She knew she convinced only herself with her justifications.
After all, no one would be that foolish as to rob an ex-Champion, and one of Hoenn's crushingly powerful Pokemon Trainers, in his city of residence, no less!
"I... thank you, May." Feeling his skin prickle with goosebumps, no doubt roused by May's horrifyingly vivid description of his lacking house maintenance, Steven ventured jerkily at a change of conversation topic. "...Now, I completely get why you had mistakenly attacked me earlier."
Silenced by guilt-stricken sheepishness, poor May Maple distinctly recalled her earlier confrontation of a would-be house intruder. Armed with a broomstick and battle cry, she had leapt out at the man, only to stumble clumsily into the light of recognition beaming from Steven Stone's face as its expression shifted swiftly from alarm to surprise at the sight of her in his house.
Then, belated realization dawned on her.
"Now, hold up! How did you even know that I was here in the first place? How did you find me?" May blinked her eyes so fast that they watered, then squinted them at Steven in a manner that made him squirm uneasily on the spot. "Come to think of it, I hadn't told anyone where I was going tonight, and I most certainly did not tell you!"
Then, belated realization dawned on him.
"It's- Ah..." Steven pressed a fist to his mouth, chewing on words that would not be verbalized. "Now, how do I go about explaining..."
Steven uncharacteristically fumbling his reply saw May recklessly arriving at a most unsavory conclusion. "It'd better not be anything creepy, like you stalking me all the way from Kalos or something like that!"
Giggling childishly, she let herself be flicked in the forehead by a finger.
"What in the world have I ever done to you to deserve that poor an opinion, of myself, from you?" Shaking his head exasperatedly and barking annoyed laughter, he directed her politely enquiring gaze to his brightly lit PokeNav screen. She watched him jab his index finger at the digital map of Hoenn which he had loaded up onscreen, intently noting how the directives blinked red where they were located in the vicinity of his Mossdeep City residence. "Not to mention the fact that this is my own house that you are accusing me of stalking you in. Now, look."
"...What?"
"Look here."
"Well, I am looking." May leant in closer, using their proximity to emphasize her puzzlement, "But what exactly am I looking at?"
"A tracker, specific to my PokeNav," Steven gushed to her closely leaning face, "to track my house in Mossdeep City with, especially in the event of trespassing or breaking-in and entering, both of which... happened tonight."
"...Ah. So, that's how you found me. And how considerate of you to leave it at just trespassing, and breaking-in and entering," Nowhere did either of them stop to consider just how suggestively their conversation was unfolding, "Calling the police on me would make the night's misunderstanding three-fold, not forgetting a whole lot of fun!"
Steven rolled his eyes. "You and I clearly have very different notions of fun."
"You won't know fun even if it jumped out at you behind a door swinging a broomstick and yelling threats!" Of the two of them, May was the first to settle back, with a pout tugging at the corners of her mouth and her arms folded across her chest in a deliberate display of petulance. "And point very much taken, by the way. I won't stop by your place anymore if you're going to get all fussy about it, Mr. Stalker- no, Tracker."
"Again, what have I ever done to you to deserve that poor an opinion, of myself, from you?" Continuing to swipe away at his PokeNav screen, he relished the way her staring eyes widened, first in interest, then astonishment. "Well, no matter. About time I did something to remedy that anyway."
Disbelief drove her to scoot closer. "What are you doing?"
Her scooting closer caused him to deliberate her speaking tone. "Giving you permission."
"To do what?" She could have screamed at his deliberation.
"To trespass, my dear." Aside from hearing his affectionate address of her, watching him key in her full name to have it join his in the list that read 'House Ownership' came dangerously close to overwhelming. "Now, with your name added here, my tracker will recognize you as co-owner of my Mossdeep property!" Listening to his explanation worsened the situation with her noisily buzzing mind and boisterously beating heart, not that Steven noticed.
All this time, he had kept his head bowed and his mind occupied on the pretext of typing while stubbornly feigning ignorance to the way those pretty, violet eyes of hers continued peering warmly up at his face.
...But he was not going to look at her. He was not going to let himself pay her any attention.
Deep down, he knew that so long as their eyes did not meet, he would be able to keep up this little pretense of his.
"...Done."
"Really? Let me see! Show me!" May blurted out demandingly, shrinking back and recomposing herself in the wake of her excitement to shyly add, "...Please?"
Even though he did not hand her his PokeNav, he did let her lean in for a closer look at its screen.
And there it was. Her name! In full! 'May Maple', seconding 'Steven Stone' in house... ownership...
Oh. Dear. God.
She could feel her imagination running wilder than it had ever before. She needed a distraction, one that would immediately stop her ludicrous fantasizing and get her gaily laughing...
"...'Wallace'?" Reading the name aloud from a separate, differently titled list, she did burst out laughing gaily. "'Blocked'! And so's Sidney, Phoebe, Brawly... that's basically all of our mutual friends!" Jostling Steven in the side for a look at the rest of the startlingly long list, she gave her loudest laugh yet. "Well, I can't say I'm surprised to find Sycamore on this list, but how can you block even your own father out of entering your house?"
"One, drama." She took his raised index finger to mean Wallace and his incorrigible tendency to waltz in wherever and whenever, always unannounced and at inconvenient timing. "Two, rocks." Next, she took his raised middle finger to mean Joseph Stone and his willful habit of barging in and squirreling away portions of his son's prized geological collections for research, always without permission and return.
"...Well," Unable to help herself, May finally gave in to her fantasy. Just one, just a little, just a while. "What about me?"
"Housekeeping," Unable to help himself, Steven gave in to a little tease for a little while, deadpanning and flinching from a hard jab painfully delivered from her to his lower left ribcage. "Hey! Watch the drink!"
Wriggling, in an attempt to either dodge her or dislodge her, ended with him roughly spilling hot chocolate and dotting surrounding sand with more than few droplets of dark liquid.
"Oh. Right. Sorry!" Resisting the urge to take advantage of Steven's ticklish disposition, May regathered herself with little embarrassed giggling. Looking around, she settled on a suitable enough spot in which to place the mug for safekeeping. With much care, she heaped more sand up around its circular bottom so that it was less likely to upset or spill, patting her palms clean of sand after she was done. "...There's only one mug of hot chocolate. Why's there only one? Where's yours, Steven?"
"I-" Steven coughed uncomfortably. "I don't have one."
"But..." May began slowly. "You could have made one for yourself."
"I can't. I couldn't. Not with only one mug lying around."
"Oh!" Registering the reason behind Steven's odd behavior a little too late for his peace of mind, she let out a small gasp of belated apology. "R-Right, there weren't any more mugs to go around, were there? It hadn't occurred to me to get more since you were away and not likely to come back home... any time soon." Any implication that her words carried clearly went over her head, for she did little more than nod innocently at Steven's quietly pained, bitterly smiling face while casually suggesting, "Let's share this mug then?"
May's offer had him coughing harder at the underlying awkwardness of it. "W-We could do that."
...Then, May finally cottoned on to said implications of earlier.
Finding herself flushing harder than she had expected to, from it, she floundered for a way out of their situation. "...Why don't I keep to this side of the mug since I'd already been- ah, drinking from it there?" Her cheeks could not feel any hotter. Nor could they appear any redder. "So, you'll use this side then?"
As if in self-validation of the intended innocence of their interactions thus far, Steven immediately did as she indicated, with a lift of the mug to his face and a following large, loud gulp of hot chocolate.
...After all, people shared food and drink every day. He and May were people, no different from others, and would do best for themselves to continue thinking in that particular way for the rest of their time together tonight.
Blankly staring, blue-grey eyes fixated straight ahead from an inscrutable visage as, behind it, the turbulence of self-justification raged.
"...Ahh...!"
Hearing her sigh, he glanced over at the same time she abandoned her sitting position to flop ever so relaxedly backwards onto the sponginess of moist sand.
...Lovely May Maple, languidly spread-eagled and completely at ease next to him beneath their shared duvet, was everything but a sight that he, Steven Stone, could physically bear to take in.
The need to avert greedily staring eyes was beyond pressing.
"...May?" Appearing wary, Steven swallowed thickly. "This is most inappropriate."
"No, Steven." Appearing weary, May droned tediously. "I do this all the time, here. This is the perfect spot for a spot of star-gazing. This is not inappropriate."
His hesitance was palpable. "...Star-gazing? Here? Now?"
Her little side glance revealed far more nonchalance than he could have mustered of himself. "No better time than now is there, when the stars are aplenty and the night is long?"
"I agree-"
"-So, join in." She briefly stopped her mooning to invite, "Join me."
Finding himself far from being reassured by the openness of her behavior, he vexed over it. "We may be seen."
"Not with Kira's Reflect in effect, no, we won't." She scoffed, going from relaxing to outright lazing.
"That's not-" In a fit of pique, Steven spoke harsher than he had meant to. Immediately interrupting himself with terse groaning, he emphasized hard, "That's hardly the point, May, and you jolly well know it! We're-"
"-We're friends, Steven." Nettled by his incessant fretting, May bit out, rolling herself up onto an elbow to grab the man by his lapel. "I'm your friend, Steven, your longtime friend. And I'm now inviting you to join me for a night of star-gazing." When he did not budge, she pushed her hardest, insisting severely, "You owe me this, Steven Stone. You owe me for having skipped out on me- on us all tonight."
...He would never admit it, of course, but he was intimidated.
Discreetly, gingerly, Steven eased himself into a reclining position onto the patch of sand flanking May. Tilting his head to the starlit night sky, he began delicately, "May..."
"...Steven?"
"You knew I was there." At the Ball. With you.
"I knew." Neither looked at the other as the conversation began its tentative, slow foray into confrontational territory. "Of course, I knew."
"You..." He knew he would regret taking it further, but did so anyway. "Y-You aren't... upset? At... me? For having... stayed away tonight?" Drastically unlike his usual eloquence, he resorted to clearing his throat, unnecessarily roughly and in a manner reminiscent of failing clockwork plodding sluggishly away.
"...Me?" She knew she would end up agonizing over it otherwise and so, deeply considered the following, "I was, but aside from me, many others were, too. Wallace was beyond upset. He was absolutely furious. Your father was hopping mad, fuming, ready to murder someone," Tapering her rapidly rising temper was shrugging she purposely kept casual before him. "You should expect to face their combined wrath very, very soon."
"And yours?" Steven frowned. He just had to keep shooting himself in the foot, hadn't he?
"Mine? My anger? Well, we both know exactly what that would have done for us. More importantly," Blatantly ignoring his squeamishness at her insinuation, she continued fiercely pressing, "you knew it would upset me if you stayed away and you chose to anyway. You stayed away, knowing exactly how I'd see it, what I'd feel about it." She could have heard him swallow, given the extent to which her speaking voice had suddenly lowered, almost to mere whispering.
He flinched uneasily at the intensity of her accusation, unable to refute or react to it. "...I didn't- I didn't think I- it'd upset you this much, May."
"Think, Steven!" May huffed impatiently, tossing her head from side to side. "You never called about my Championship, about me. Yes, you're a busy man, but so is everyone else, those who reached out... anyway. The Birches, Wally's family..." Her rant was beginning to degenerate into soft, weak sobbing. "Even your father had phoned, asking if you had phoned. Not forgetting tonight," Both drew breath, unanimously and sharply, when she suddenly angled her face towards his to appeal pleadingly. "...Didn't you think that I'd be upset about tonight?"
In the wake of an emotional meltdown, she found herself suddenly overtaken by a swift, complete loss of words.
...She had him trapped. They both knew that she had had him trapped.
Rendered helpless by May's violently accusing, visibly teary glower, Steven caved. "I... am sorry, May." The ensuing exchange of deep, heartfelt gazes clearly addressed long-festering resentment and regret alike. This was hardly the time for excuses, be it the making of or the listening to. "Work... kept me busy, but it did not keep me... away. I kept myself away... from you, deliberately, and I cannot express to you in words just how deeply I regret it."
Little else needed to be said for the bitter hurt to dissipate from May's unspeaking face, which a quietly hopeful Steven took as a positive sign. "I don't suppose telling you now that I had been waiting- hoping to congratulate you in person will do anything... anything at all to restore your confidence in me and earn me your complete forgiveness?"
Reminiscent of three years ago, also at night, by her bedside in a hospital ward, he offered a hand to May in truce, palm upturned and fingers beckoning.
"...It'll do something, I suppose." She reached for his hand, only to have it abruptly withdrawn right beneath her nose. "Hey!"
"Hey," Bolting upright and sending sand everywhere by shuffling around to face her, Steven exclaimed a tad too loudly for comfort, "you weren't there at all!"
May's visibly offended face contorted further at his accusation. "Yes, I was!"
"No, you weren't." He objected to her agitated face, a tad too triumphantly for ease of mind. "Well, you were present in the earlier night but not for the rest of it. I was there. I stayed the night and looked everywhere for you, but you were gone. You had gone! You left early, even though you knew that I was around."
"So?" Despite feeling cornered, May still challenged him with a tilt of her chin.
Taking in that wide-eyed, steadily furtive expression of hers, he snickered and drawled in that deliberate manner of his which chagrined an increasingly mortified May to be at the receiving end of, "So, it appears that I wasn't alone in getting all weirded out about seeing each other again tonight!"
In his moment of conceit, he neglected the closeness with which he had been hovering over her.
...And staring directly into Steven's handsome, flippantly smirking visage above, a red-faced May blew her night's emotional barometer.
In her moment of impulse, she reached for his face, grabbed it by the left cheek, and pinched hard.
"...Yeah? It pleases you to say that, eh? It makes you feel good to see me all embarrassed and acting up, eh?"
Pulling harder still at his flesh, poor May lost herself wholly to a mad fluster over the racket of Steven's loud, sharp yelps of pain, "...Ow, ow, ow! M-May! Stop it! S-Stop... stop! Let go!"
"I'm nineteen, Steven, and- and not a girl anymore! I'm allowed to feel shy! I'm allowed to be awkward around people, especially boys! E-Especially... especially..."
"...'Especially'...?" Poor Steven barely managed through the haze of soreness and pressure building steadily up in the left side of his face.
...It was a genuine question, asked in genuine confusion, from a person genuinely seeking answers and relief alike.
Sadly, all it did was to make May tug even more painfully on his face.
"Especially when I'm all dressed up like this! Look at me looking like this, in front of everyone else just now, and now, in front of you! It's weird! I look- I feel..." As suddenly as she had started rampaging, she quailed. Realization of their incredible proximity, a direct result of her having pulled a helpless Steven closely over her, caused her to knock him off-balance sitting up. "I'm- I'm going!"
He barely registered her taking off running through the flurry of activity, scrambling clumsily to his own feet and giving chase.
"...May? May!" In his haste, he ended up carelessly tripping over her high heels which she had slipped off and left half-buried in sand. In his desperation, he could care less about the sheer abandon with which he yelled after her. "May!"
As if finally hearing him clearly, she halted, standing with her feet rooted to the spot and her back facing stiffly away.
"May," Stepping carefully within speaking distance, Steven gasped breathlessly to her shyly bowed face, "May Maple, you look beautiful tonight. You look... You look..."
"...Like a Champion?"
He extinguished her petulance with sincerity. "Like yourself." Reaching out and taking one of her hands in his, he massaged it open with warm, firm fingers. "You look lovely, May. This dress suits you perfectly."
Admittedly, he was not someone unaccustomed to paying compliments, the patronizing sort in particular. Such obligations had dominated a large part of his youth growing up in his family's high-flying business and social circle.
But, to May Maple, he was... open. Straightforward with his manner and speech. And it showed in the way she responded to him.
"...This is my mother's dress!" Mollified now, and more than eager to share about her night, May began earnestly explaining while preening away, "I recall her wearing it often in my childhood. It had been her 'date dress', growing up! And she's kindly loaned it to me for tonight to wear at the Devon Ball!"
Wordlessly, Steven watched her flip her skirt from side to side and twirl, showing off its fullness and her happiness.
For his own sake, he chose to focus on her dress.
Modestly sleeved and modestly skirted in design, it swathed her body in lightweight fabric which resembled expensive silk satin in both visuals and texturing yet stretched like spandex, specifically the sort that was associated with athleticwear. Such ease of movement in clothing was necessary, he presumed, for someone who could easily go from accompanying a lover on a romantic date to following him into the heat of ensuing Pokemon battle.
It had belonged to Petra, no? Surely, it had suited the mother then as it did the daughter now.
Outlined by the gossamery paleness of starlight beneath the moonless night, the earlier illusion of iridescence had entirely returned to May's figure, erratic in motion yet veiled in a shade of bluish purple so subtly layered that it seemed like a part of cloud.
Glimpsing the glimmer of the champagne gold of her single hair barrette as it flickered reflectively between the numerous tiny knife pleats in her swirling skirt, he was suddenly reminded of the actual beverage itself bubbling away in a tall, fluted glass. With a start, he distinctly recalled watching Wallace offer the exact same thing to her tonight at the Devon Ball and came to the uncomfortable realization that she... had really attained that age to be allowed alcohol, to be reasonably considered an adult, and to suitably partake in activities that were previously out of her reach.
His beatific gaze lingered on her rosy-cheeked face.
Boldly, May met it, swollen with words her heaving chest and tightening throat barely kept suppressed. All that unspoken struggling culminated in a huge, surprising release that made her want to crawl into a hole underground out of sheer mortification.
In Steven's adoring eyes, however, she made sneezing adorable.
"D-Don't-"
Incapable of intelligible speech without it choking her up in return, May shoved her heavily flushed face hard into her cupped palms and swiveled away from Steven, only to feel him stepping closer to gently lay his blazer atop her quivering shoulders.
...They were unexpectedly muscled and broad for her petite build, even beneath the structured frame of menswear.
When he did not further their interactions, she took to peering tentatively through the gaps between her fingers, letting her gaze wander and noting the stark absence of his signature steel ornamentation, much to her surprise.
Seeking out his Mega-Evolution pin in vain where it could be typically found glistening on the left jacket lapel, she pondered upon the decorative nature of its replacement instead of rainbow-colored Metagrossite, distracted from her concerned thoughts of Steven's Metagross by the weight and warmth settling on her shoulders and creeping down her back.
Parched for that physical contact with her which he had been denying himself of for far too long, Steven's hands gladly busied themselves.
At one point, they were busy adjusting the placement of his blazer on her upper torso so that it might sit comfortably enough on her to better shield her from the nighttime chill despite clearly being several sizes larger.
At another, they were busy dusting stray sand and peeling dried up sea salt off her body and clothing so that none could remain and discomfit her.
At last, they, in their unchanging reluctance to experiment with and push loosely set boundaries, found themselves suddenly at a loss for what more to do.
The rustle of fabric from May tugging his blazer tighter around her upper torso was drowned out by the rumble of his lowly speaking voice when he finally let his hands rest and the mind take over. "...It's getting late and cold out here. Shall we look at settling in for the night?"
"O-Oh! Oh, right!" Under his gently prompting gaze, she jumped and flamed. "You're right, I..." Hastily recollecting herself, she stared hard into the distance behind them, regarding Mossdeep Pokemon Centre and its dimly lit three floors with a measured look and murmuring under her breath, "...I think overnight lodgings are still available at the Centre-"
"-No," Steven gave a slight cough, speaking with polite emphasis, "I meant that you could stay here, at my house."
Dumbstruck, May stared disbelievingly at him. "At your house?"
Reading her flabbergasted expression, he hastened to clarify, "You stay the night in my house, in Mossdeep City. In the meantime, I will return to Rustboro City," In response to her now enquiring look, he switched out mortified frowning for wry smiling, "to face the music."
Tendrils of hazel brown hair straying out of her loosened updo teased at the corners of her adorably upturned mouth as she cocked her head at him and quipped, "It's late, Steven, if you haven't already noticed. I highly doubt that your father's still awake and waiting to rain hell on you about tonight. How about you stay home for the night and get rested, and I pop by Rustboro City tomorrow morning with you to help you out?"
"...I-" Somehow, without looking at his face, without actually needing to hear it herself, she already knew what he was going to say. "-I will not be here tomorrow, May..." From a rueful, apologetically smiling mien, he ventured carefully, "I will be heading back to Kalos early tomorrow morning."
"For good?" Refusal to face him while he spoke gave her the courage to acknowledge all that she was hearing.
Again...
He was leaving again. And again, she was helpless to do anything about it.
...All over again.
"For as long as it takes for me to pack for my return trip to Hoenn." Unable to bear the way May's body language had begun to slump from dismay clouding over, Steven opted swiftly out of the toying, preferring her brightly rejoicing to wallowing in horribly misguided disappointment. "...It shouldn't take any longer than a month or so in order to wrap up my Kalos years and straighten out my years of absence from Hoenn."
...The man spoke about it all with such casualness, as if an upheaval of life as massive as this could be as plainly straightforward and mundane as getting coffee. Or hot chocolate.
Striding up shore, he joined his unnaturally quiet companion in packing up and diligently picking up after themselves. Giving him an advantage in height and position was his comparatively large gait, which easily put him several paces ahead of her as well as the ease of looking back at her.
May's joy was palpable, seeping into her very existence. Her demeanor and movement bloomed from it, just the way he enjoyed knowing that he was the reason behind it. It was the way she could not help smiling to herself as she gathered the duvet into her arms. It was also the way she seemed to be having the most fun in the world grasping the duvet by two fistfuls of fabric, giving it a good shake all over and brushing residual sand off it.
Her change of mood was sudden and infectious. And he was happily infected.
"What has gotten into you, my dear? You seem oddly enthused over something. Is it something that I had said?" The mock innocence with which he indicated her behavior inspired the unexpected clumsiness with which she fumbled the tidying up.
"...Oh, shut it, you-" May averted her reddening face and swallowed nervously. "-You get over here quickly and help me pack!"
"Roger that, Champion May."
The duvet ended up unraveling from its ball-like state to spill heavily from her arms when she briefly loosened her grip on it to reach for the hot chocolate mug at her feet. In response to her struggle, Steven rounded her back and extended a helping hand in her place to pluck it from its sand confines.
Noting the last of liquid chocolate sloshing thickly around the inside, he brought the mug to his lips, draining it in a single mouthful and swallowing before abruptly balking, for in their apparent thoughtlessness, neither he nor May had been keeping to their respective sides of the mug as agreed on earlier.
Carefully tracking the trail of lip imprints staining the white porcelain an uneven shade of red around the rim of the mug in the chaos of sharing, he noted, much to his embarrassment, that it was practically impossible to tell his from May's. To the naked eye, her lipstick stain seemed ubiquitous on the mug, leading him to weigh how big a part he had had to play in unknowingly spreading it all over this whole time.
"...Steven, come on!" Blissfully oblivious to his pinch, May called out to him from where she still stood and waited farther ahead. "Let's go!"
Taken with the breathtaking sight of her delicately starlit silhouette coming into gradual but steady focus, Steven Stone approached May Maple under her smilingly beckoning gaze but stopped her short when she attempted to move on, redirecting her attention upwards instead with pointing and gasping, "...Look!"
Craning their necks and tilting their faces, they watched the sky welcome a meteor shower. Out of nowhere, stars began streaking across the inkiness, unannounced and in unprecedented abundance. Innumerable and seemingly in continuous deluges, they came close to overwhelming the gloom of moonless night with their silvery, modestly luminous beauty.
"...My word. How... can this possibly be?" He sighed wonderingly, then heard her sigh humbly after he did. "This is... too much too fast..."
"This is nature."
"...It's beautiful..." Tinging her admiration was the reverence with which one submitted to the glory of cosmic phenomena. "Could it be Pokemon?"
"Beauty and wonder can exist outside of Pokemon, May." Between the starlight that tinted the night gossamery silver and the light of elation that emanated from May, he chose to take in the latter, prompting meaningfully, "...Well, there's only one other thing to do now."
His softly agleam, blue-grey eyes further softened at her shy smile. "Make a wish?"
"Make a wish."
Mind racing and heart quaking, May held his tender gaze in a long, impenetrable look as yearning and words alike bubbled up a suddenly dry throat. The moment they reached the back of her mouth, however, she broke their eye contact to oddly chuckle, "Not tonight." She shook her head, puzzling him. "...Shall we?"
Ever the tactful gentleman, Steven acquiesced in her retreat, accepting tonight's rejection with grace and awareness of her need for time. It was just as well, knowing that he could do with a lot more of that himself.
Widening his gait, he caught up with May shortly, heading in the general direction of his house, arms full and skin cold under the cloak of star-spangled, velvety midnight.
He looked up once more, seeing the truth of May's observations.
...The stars appeared resplendent and aplenty tonight, indescribably so. It might have been the work of a Pokemon. It was likely natural phenomena. It might mean nothing at all without people looking up at the night sky, awestruck yet humbled.
In May's presence, it meant everything. And the smile on her face, which was the last to bade him farewell for the night, joined the stars high above to greet him the following morning.