Hello, it is Wednesday and I am back with a new chapter! Unlike how it sometimes is, I've known for a while which chapter was to be uploaded today. And it focuses on a subject that I've resisted tackling before. But this year, I've decided to delve into it even if it is pretty iffy and (it goes without saying) not the proudest moment in James' life. I've written here and there about how James and Misty have a romantic fling the year after he quits Team Rocket. But this chapter tells how it all comes about. I hope you enjoy this mess of a moment :D
Ages:
Misty: 18
James: 24
Needless to say, this chapter portrays an age gap and infidelity so skip this one if you prefer!
The sun stubbornly tried to break through the clouds on a murky Kanto day, but it was no good. The thick covering of grey up above persisted. It was just going to be one of those days. And you just had to hope that it would be better tomorrow.
It had come out of nowhere. Spring in the year of 2016 had been a beaming one. The daffodils had seemed to be in a rush to poke their green, stringy stems above the soil and the sun was acting like a child who had found the joy in discovering something new.
It could not stop showing off its refreshed skill.
Bird Pokémon from all over had migrated to our region because of the pleasant weather. They were the only creatures undeterred by the heavy day, accepting the sky no matter what state that it was in.
On this particular day, they tweeted merrily in the sky as they fluttered from tree to tree, trusting that everything passed. No matter how long. It always did. On this day, Misty did not seek comfort in the unwavering attitude of the Fletchling and the Starly and the Pidove as they chatted away to the Pidgey. In fact, as she momentarily lifted her head from sitting cross legged on the grass, she looked stony faced at them.
However, she tried to not let them know of her attitude. She did not hiss out any curse words because even she knew that she was being unreasonable. She instead, lowered her head back down, twiddling her fingers between growing blades of grass and she tried to keep her curled lip and her subtly twitching eyebrow to herself.
It melted away naturally in time. Her countenance was replaced when she looked upon the grave of her parents. But she sighed, her shoulders rising and falling like this was their sole purpose.
Sometimes she did not know why she found comfort in being there beside her parents in this state, but she did. Her sisters found her terribly morbid. They told her that it probably made a bad mood of hers a hundred times worse and that was the reason that she was often so cranky!
Misty sighed a second time, removing the pads of her fingers from the tickly strands of grass and instead traced the lettering on the grave as if it were braille, her lips moving as she read even though she knew it all off by heart. The sight encouraged a lump in her throat. But she did not draw her hand back.
Jordan and Lynne Williams, it read, together again.
Maybe Daisy, Violet and Lily were right. Even Misty had to admit that she did feel a little worse after reading those words, her hand falling to her lap like an unwanted brown leaf that had been discarded from the rest of the tree.
She was happy that they were together again. It was all Jordan had ever wanted. But them being together again made them separate from her and that caused an ache in her heart no matter how much time passed.
Sometimes she thought about whether they thought about her or not. Could even think about her or not. Was her dad happy? She didn't really remember him as anything but. Sometimes she remembered her mother's pale, worried face, and the way that Misty was the one to wake Jordan up in the morning rather than the other way around.
But everything had been a game to her. Seemed to be a game to Jordan. He had changed when they all lost Lynne. Misty hoped that he was happy. But she couldn't help but plant her sneakers on the ground and pull her legs to her chest as it dawned on her that if her father were happy then he was happy without her.
Misty looked down at her shoes flattening the blades of grass and perhaps a million invisible insects too, trying not to think about how everybody seemed happier without her. This, however, was not a sensation in her hollow chest so easily quashed like removing from her brain the thoughts that she had just destroyed millions of invisible lives by planting her feet against the ground.
A million more would be lost with every step that she took.
Interrupting her thoughts as she sat in the graveyard, reunited with her parents in the smallest way yet again, was the low rumbling sound of a motorcycle. Misty outwardly cursed this time, her eyebrows plaiting together even tighter and her legs resuming their earlier position of being crossed on the ground.
She was not in the mood for company. Ash hadn't been in the mood for her company, so she decided that it was best to keep away from everybody for the day. Her parents, of course, were a ghostly exception.
Although the sounds interrupted her gloomy musings, they didn't quite numb them entirely and she still experienced thoughts of similar kinds racing around her mind, only adding to the knot in her brow. Raising a hand to rub her forehead underneath her bangs, Misty tried to kid herself that the motorbike had stopped its growling because it had raced right past Cerulean City Cemetery.
Lowering her hand back to her lap all over again and her left elbow digging into her own bony hip, her hand on the same side cupping underneath her chin, she tried to resume what she had been doing. It hadn't exactly been a pleasant affair! But sometimes she felt that stewing in her moodiness was her only option. Sometimes it was the necessary thing to do.
How could she move on if she didn't let herself feel?
Misty couldn't help but feel confusion twitching in her gut when, a few seconds later, she felt the urge to groan at the appearance of somebody familiar. It had been too good to be true to think that he would pass by the cemetery gates without checking that she was there and at least coming to say hi.
The sun made another attempt to sneakily peak through the thick jumble of grey clouds. Misty lifted her head further up and momentarily away from the claw of her hand. James was standing there, having ditched his motorbike at the gates but still wearing his leather jacket.
His hand broke the distance with the petulant sky, not to wave but to push his hair out of his eyes. It needed a good sorting out after he had ridden without a helmet but somehow his locks appeared better than most.
Misty then couldn't tell if it was this that irked her. Or it was his presence in general.
"I thought I would catch you here." In the same way that James did not wave to her, he did not say hello to her either. Hand still rummaging through his locks, the side of his mouth twitched into a smile just for her. "I didn't expect to find you alone, though."
His words were said cheerfully enough. But even if James had somehow shapeshifted into her most favorite thing in the world, she would have still bitten his head off, I'm afraid.
Somehow, Misty managed to not roar at him. But her words left a vinegary taste in two mouths and caused James to need to continue smoothing his hair down with both hands even though he had succeeded in getting it looking a whole lot tidier.
"Of course I'm here alone." Misty said in a hardened tone of voice, having to use a lot of energy to not allow her upper lip to quirk upwards, close to her nose. She added, her hand wrapping around a fistful of grass and weeds. "Why wouldn't I be?"
James quickly began to see what kind of attitude he was going to have to contend with if he stuck around. Though he wondered what had caused her to feel like she needed to behave this way, he didn't exactly mind it either.
He was quite good at just going with the flow. Especially when it came to other people's moods.
He shrugged his shoulders, the black leather of his jacket brushing the earrings dangling from just the one of his lobes, his hands finding their way into the pockets of his blue jeans.
His reasonable expression did not fade away.
"Assumed you'd be with Ash." he said. And that was that. That was that for words anyway.
His eyes, however, said more than his mouth possibly could. And oh, how Misty loathed that his grass green eyes were following her, even if they were just waiting for more words – or more attitude – from her.
Sometimes she couldn't stand his eyes! It wasn't that they were interrogative because they weren't. They didn't make you twitch on the spot with their intensity either. They just observed everything. Seemed to dig underneath the surface as if that were what they were designed for.
James could read a lot of people and a lot of situations incredibly well. Misty was very much one of this people that he was skilled in cracking.
She decided to reject his gaze. She focused on travelling her eyes up towards his hairline, looking there instead as she spoke to him and making him think that a strand of hair of his still hung untamed.
But he soon focused on spying the falsely painted grin swiping across her face instead, and the way that she sat more upright, as if an invisible puppeteer had suddenly shoved a rod through her spine.
"Oh, I'm sure he's having loads of fun today. He rushed off to Professor Oak's Lab at the crack of dawn and had a new idea to try with all those Tauros of his. He's with Gary." she explained, her hand reaching up to twiddle with her bangs as they hung over her eyebrows. But it was not feeling her own hair that caused her countenance to slip from her slender fingers. It was the slope in James' neck. "As usual."
Seeing James listening to her once she had dropped her gaze down from his hairline, his head tilted on the one side and his bejeweled hand reaching to trace across his own chest, made it a lot harder to pretend.
These words escaped from her like the runaway she often was before she could stop them.
The hue of her cheeks began to match a similar warmth to her shade of hair when James began to smirk, the corner of his mouth quirking on the one side and closer to the silver earrings dangling from his ear lobe.
With a grunt of leather, his arms folded over his chest.
"Do I detect some bitterness?" James might have felt delighted that he believed that he was reading Misty with ease, but he did not want to act as if he was glad that Ash had left her feeling lonesome. This was not the case, so he did not spell these words out either.
A grunt like the one that had ricocheted off James' jacket found its way into and out of Misty's throat before she could stop it and though she denied his observation, the way that her lips pouted, and her hands grabbed another fistful of grass betrayed her.
James' smirk softened into a secretly fond smile. But Misty was too busy looking at the strands of grass poking out between her fingers to notice this.
"No." Misty muttered, silently trying to count the various kinds of foliage that she had in her clenched hand. But she wasn't good at recognizing them. Not like James was. "I guess I did hope that we would spend together today seeing as it's been a while." In her peripheral vision, she could see his head nodding while it tilted to the side. And his gesture caused these words to fall out of her too. "And I didn't think that I would still feel like one of Ash's friends but him still prioritize his actual friends."
James' tilting of the head straightened up and at the same time, Misty felt a wincing motion taking over her face and it was not because she had accidentally grabbed hold of a nettle. She let go the fistful of greenery all the same and James invited himself to sit down.
Not that Misty noticed because she was too busy wincing a second time, but James purposely stepped around the grave instead of over it and plonked himself down to the side.
He might end up crossing boundaries by probing on that day, but he was not going to disrespect Misty's tenderest memories.
"That sounds difficult." James responded to Misty's words with a tone of voice far flatter than the ground that they were both sitting on. Flicking his hair from his eyes with a gesture of his head rather than a motion of the hand, he began playing with the rings on his fingers for something to do. "Would you like to talk about it?"
Misty's bangs shimmied on her forehead, the longer points of them framing her face as her head swung from side to side, this answer appearing before a vocal one did. But her words soon joined her gesture.
"No." she was certain about this. James nodded, his skull ring on the opposite side of where a wedding band should be being the focal point of his fiddling. He allowed silence to ring out. They both did. But then Misty found herself filling it. "I love Ash for who he is. I guess I always have." her cheeks began to grow tinged with pink as she admitted this. "I don't want to start nagging now."
James' thumb and forefinger on his right hand wrapping around the ring on his left hand as he continued to swivel it thoughtfully, his expression couldn't help but momentarily fall into a thoughtful one, his mouth flicking for a second into an upside-down u.
Ignoring the blush that had inadvertently taken over her pale cheeks – both at the words that she had said about Ash and how she was conversing with James after swearing she would keep herself to herself for the day - Misty's eyes formed a wince as she misread his brief expression. She believed that he was absorbing and thinking about the part where she said she didn't want to nag, rather than it being down to the other thing.
James, however, read the situation more accurately than Misty. He knew that he had to act quickly, or he would be left looking mightily suspicious sat next to a grave of people that he hadn't even met!
His fingers fell away from his silver ring, his hands instead occupying himself with some of the foliage that was growing in front of his patch. His eyes raised, focusing on Misty even as he plucked flowers.
"Have you had a conversation with Ash that you've been feeling this way?" James wondered. Inwardly, he tried not to be judgmental. He couldn't imagine that Ash would be very receptive to this sort of thing!
He guessed that he was okay with being vulnerable. But probably didn't have the vocabulary to talk these kinds of things through.
James wasn't surprised when, as he gathered blades of grass, daisies and dandelions into his hold, Misty's head slowly shook from side to side all over again.
But he was a little bit taken aback that she was still talking to him!
"No. It's not the kind of thing that we talk about." Misty answered and James assumed that that was all that she was going to say so he nodded his head instead of probing any further. He didn't bother to think about the kinds of things that they did talk about. He and Misty could cover a lot of ground but with Ash either silence prevailed or the younger male asking too many questions! "Besides, it's not the most annoying thing." James looked up from gathering a few more daisies. "It's worse when Ash finally does something romantic and then I find out either Gary or Brock basically set the whole thing up."
James couldn't help but chuckle upon hearing this and then he was left holding his collection of flowers away from Misty when her eyes narrowed all over again and absentmindedly dropped down to his hands and he thought that she was going to take out her wrath on his little display!
When James' amusement died down, he could understand why that was disheartening to Misty. She had openly told him of her dreams to go back to Kalos one day and eat cheese and pastries in Lumiose City while romantically strolling arm in arm.
She may have been young when she and Ash had gotten together but there had still been plenty of time to daydream all her innermost hopes and dreams that could come to fruition in a relationship.
His flowers still safely in the hold of his right hand, James' leather jacket resided against his upper thigh, and he cupped his sculpted jawline with his left hand.
Though he looked at Misty fondly for a couple of seconds while she huffily looked down at her sneakers, he decided to take a risk by openly laughing a second time, breaking his arm away from his thigh to momentarily jab her arm with a glinting finger.
"Maybe you should date Gary or Brock instead?" James teased her, his hand breaking away from her before she even thought about snapping his fingers off, bunching the foliage together in the one hand and hunting for an extra-long, thick, blade of grass. "I'm sure you could do worse."
Misty decided to finally look back at James, addressing the first part of his words instead. She erupted with her infamous hostility that James preferred to label as wit.
Her poisonous tongue flicked, and a question formulated.
"Maybe you should go and...?" she wondered. But it wasn't the kind of question that encouraged an answer. And it wasn't the kind of question that I can bring myself to repeat!
Miraculously, James didn't seem offended. After all, supposedly he was used to Jessie.
James erupted into laughter all over again, at this far more than anything else that had been said, his eyes squeezing together and subtle dents at the top of his nose appeared to show his good sense of humor.
Misty, on the other hand, for once wasn't in the mood to join in his laughter, even if it was a compliment to her character that he knew not to take offense and was about to laugh about it. James knew when it was time to tone down his chuckles and it was there and then, so he quietened himself down.
After a couple of seconds had passed, he pressed his mouth together and he reached to momentarily rest his hand on Misty's kneecap. She was wearing a denim skirt without tights as if it were a warm day so the only warmth that she felt was James' caring bleeding from his palm to her porcelain skin.
"Seriously, I think that you should talk to Ash about all of this. You are allowed to be happy." For some reason, James found himself swallowing and his hand retracted away from Misty, back to fiddling away with the flowers. "What have you got to lose?"
James' hand had only been on Misty's kneecap for a couple of seconds, but she noticed straight away that his fingernails were pinker than usual and not because, like she was prone to doing, he had been having a good bite.
She couldn't help but wonder if the chipping, soft pink nail polish was his daughter, Jazmyn's creative expression or he had gotten bored working a particularly quiet evening shift at Delia's restaurant.
Misty would never know. All that she knew was that she suddenly didn't like James' advice and how she felt that he was acting like he wasn't the one with hiccups in a relationship. He was married to Jessie! And they were always arguing!
She rubbed her hand against her own kneecap as if that would rub away some of James' consideration. Then she looked over at him as he tied the thick blade of grass that he had found around the rest of the flowers and grasses.
Misty's face bled with bitterness.
"Oh, so you're going to talk to Jessie and find out why she's being even more of a hag lately?" she spat, her lip curling up on her face one more time before she knew that she had gone too far. But in typical Misty fashion, she did not apologize. She added: "Take your own damn advice, James." she muttered.
Her elbow had rested back against her bony hip and her hand had formed claws all over again, resting her chin defeatedly down into her palm. But she still didn't apologize. Not even when James' bones twitched inside his body, and he looked as though he was about to throw his flowers down and get the hell out of there.
Not even when, in her peripheral vision, she could see him consoling himself with a quiet grunt and his green eyes glossing over as even he couldn't believe that she had snapped in such away.
Misty couldn't help it though. He was going to get up and leave her eventually. So, it may as well have been on her terms.
James forwent defending his wife, reminding Misty that he was probably to blame since Jessie was pregnant with yet another child of theirs, but they still did not have a home to call their own. Perhaps it was telling that he did this.
It was most telling, however, that he continued to pour into Misty instead. Even though it was clear that she was pushing his buttons.
"You're allowed to be pissed off that things aren't going how you thought that they would, Misty, but don't take it out on me." James looked over at Misty, his stance mirroring the same as hers now that his own legs were now crossed. "Especially when you seem more able to talk to me about this than your boyfriend."
Misty didn't mirror his gaze. She did not mirror his gentle hands either. While his eyes dropped down so he could focus on tying the blade of grass into a neat bow, her hands were beginning to rip shreds out from the earth, and she discarded them with not a care in the world.
He was a nurturer. She was a destroyer.
They did not then know how quickly their roles could switch.
Misty hid her guiltiness in the same way that she hid a lot of emotions. With denial. Frustration.
"Whatever." she muttered underneath her breath, watching all of the innocent victims in the form of unwanted blades of grass but being unable to stop her actions either.
In her peripheral vision, she could see James' head swinging from side to side and deep inside of her it made her want to cry. She would not allow herself to do that. She would not allow her cheeks to burn. This was quite the impossible feat for she possessed the kind of cheeks that were so pale that they changed color with even the smallest emotion. Even the smallest touch.
James inhaled a slow and deep breath into his lungs and Misty's right eye privately watered and twitched, waiting for him to inevitably up and leave and walk towards his motorbike and zoom away.
She instead found herself looking over in disbelief when she found him edging himself closer to her by shuffling on his bottom. He did not seem to give her his full attention for that was saved for his makeshift bouquet. But he gave her something.
He was offering her patience.
Misty didn't have that for herself. So this was something else that she had to force herself not to weep upon receiving.
"Why don't you tell me what's really bugging you?" James suggested. He tried to keep things casual. But from the second that he suspected what her answer could be, he knew that he needed to draw his lower lip into his mouth momentarily before continuing. "There's obviously something bigger at play."
Of course there was.
James didn't know how Misty was still standing after she suffered the loss that she had at just the age of eighteen. It had floored him and Jessie both when they had experienced it at a few years older and, to tell you the truth, Misty falling pregnant by accident and losing it had shaken him to his core as well.
It was such a challenging loss to grieve because it wasn't a full something. It was an idea of something. But oh, how the loss ached just as much as any other.
James didn't want to keep on asking if Misty was okay. He didn't want to step in either, and remind Ash that he should make sure to head home every now and then because he remembered for himself how much he had leaned on his friends as well as Jessie when he had been through it.
He knew that Misty wasn't okay. He didn't want to tell her that she might never be because it still stung for him in the times that his mind and heart wandered. But he trusted that he had the strength to be there.
It was when he was helping people that he felt most useful. Most alive. A lot less broken.
Misty wanted to deny it. Tried to deny it. She showed her unease that James was reading her clearly all over again by the purposeful knot that plaited her eyebrows together and the way that her head silently swung from side to side.
But then mid twitch of her head, she caught sight of her parents grave as if they hadn't been sitting there between them all that time. James watched as a blotchy blush crept up Misty's neck and could visualize the lump residing there in the seconds before she gulped it down.
She tried to shake her head one more time. But it was no good. She looked from her parents resting place to James in the eyes for practically the first time that day.
It was up to him to give her comfort now. Offer her wisdom. Nobody else could. Nobody else stuck around.
"Nothing in life ever goes right, does it?" Misty asked with her eyebrows unclenching but they still did not relax. They drew together and tried to lift closer to her hairline in brave determination. "Especially not for me..."
Misty tried not to make her words seem so personal. But they were that. They were sentences that she had pondered for the longest time, so much so that they seemed part of her and her part of them. If you were to cut her open and words were to fall out instead of blood, this would be them.
In the words that she did not say, she silently groaned over the fact that she felt destined to lose or be lost by other people.
Somehow, James seemed to suspect this notion too as if she had said it. He was looking at her with his lips pressed together empathetically and his soft green eyes bedding into hers. She hated that. But at least he was there.
Nobody else was.
Though one thing that James had learnt in his lifetime was that nobody was in control as much as they thought they were, silently, he decided that he wouldn't tell her this. It wasn't that he didn't think that she could handle it. If anybody could handle the truth with maturity and perseverance then it was her.
But James just decided that power existed in action. Fate flourished by focusing on what you could control. There was power in action and watching things change all around you.
He tried to tell her this.
"I think you would feel a lot better if you focused on doing something to negate the feelings of things happening to you that are out of your control." James began. Immediately Misty found herself using one of his usual gestures and tilted her head to the side. He wasn't usually so forward in his opinions. "Something small. Something big. I don't know. Just something for you."
Misty didn't think that this was good advice. She didn't think it bad advice either. But the truth was, James' words were not sparking anything in her like they usually were. Perhaps it was because he was the one being proactive.
Usually, he was the passive one and she was the one filled with actions! Misguided actions. But actions all the same.
Watching him add the finishing touches to his little artistic project, Misty's eyebrows showed their hesitance by forming a union just above the bridge of her nose. She couldn't quite go along with his ideas just yet.
"Something like what?" she wondered. Unlike him, she was all out of creativity.
Perhaps James was stealing some of her essence. Certainly, it seemed as though he was swiping her candor and her risk taking when he suddenly decided to shuffle closer to her all over again, mocking his mouth falling open and his chin dropping down closer to his neck.
He held the little posy he had made out to her playfully.
"I don't know." he repeated. "Accept the flowers?" James suggested with a twinkle like a shooting star swiping across his sclera to his iris.
Misty's hand may have rather promptly reached out to accept the tiny bouquet in her hold but her countenance did not match her actions, looking at James uncertainly and her eyebrows not relinquishing the hold that they had over each other.
She laughed hesitantly. She hoped that this would conceal the warmth residing beneath her cheeks and threatening to reveal itself if she dared think that James' flower creation was very sweet. And even sweeter that he had given it to her. Even if it was a joke.
Ash scarcely did things like that.
"I don't know what to tell you, James, I'm all out of ideas." she said with a shrug and even after she couldn't resist leaning forward and giving the minuscule bouquet an even smaller inhale, she looked back at James with a smile that could be read as a sad one.
James' own mouth pressed together, lifting up just the tiniest amount when he saw Misty's own expression and heard about her lack of inspiration. It wasn't until his hands tumbled down to his own knees now that he wasn't occupying his digits with grasses and flowers that he realized that Misty must've shuffled closer to him at some point.
She was no longer sitting quite so close to the spot reserved for her parents. His knuckles were nearly brushing her knees as he took hold of his own.
"Come on. Surely you have one small idea?" James encouraged, his hands massaging against the rough denim material of his jeans before making them grow still, clasping together. "One small thing that you can do. With Ash. Or just for you. To make you feel better."
James was awfully persistent in trying to make her feel better! Misty held the flowers in one of her hands and rested her elbow back against her hip, cupping one side of her face to at least conceal one half of the warmth threatening to make itself known.
Misty started to say words not just for the sake of it. But for the sake of telling herself that she didn't have anything.
Her tone started to betray her.
"I don't..." Was all that Misty said. It wasn't common for her to only say two small words. Thankfully, James seemed to have handed her ability to see things clearly and he didn't notice that her sentence had sounded more like a question.
James instead focused on nodding his head. Sympathetically. He looked right at her. Kindly.
It began to get even harder for Misty to act like her cheeks did not want to burn from the inside out. It became nearly impossible for her to act as if her heart hadn't become a butterfly that was now flapping its wings inside her stomach.
"Well... Hopefully soon you'll think of something that you really want to do." James smiled. It gave the glinting of his jewelry a run for its money. "And you'll do it."
Misty swallowed as subtly as she could, trying to copy James' nod of the head. After a secret breath that she drew into her lungs, she pulled the palm of her hand away from her cheek and she discarded the flower bouquet, placing it down where James had found all of the pieces to make the creation.
Then she picked it up again. But then she put it down again. James didn't say anything, only looked at her with an amiable albeit quizzical look on his face. He had spotted her actions. He always spotted everything.
Misty said words so that he wouldn't spot everything. If he did know, she wanted it to be on her terms.
"Maybe there is something?" It was the second time that she sounded her words as if they were a question. Hesitantly, (and silently wishing that her bangs were longer so she could conceal more of herself) she looked over at James for his response.
It wasn't words. He was still smiling. With a slope in his neck. Consideration glittered behind his gaze. He looked at her softly. And with the kind of smile that she felt that she had known forever. She could happily know it for a very long time.
James didn't answer with words. Not actual words. He waited for Misty to tell him – or show him – merely mumbling aloud a sort of mmhmm? noise.
Now that Misty's hands too where empty, they hovered awkwardly about her stomach with the crook of her elbow bent. She figured that he was waiting for her to tell him. She wasn't going to. She had to hope that it was okay with him that she really was following what he suggested – Misty was going to allow actions to do the talking.
Misty's hands still did not know what they were doing but she hoped that they would eventually for, slowly but surely, the rest of her body began to lean in. She paused. She could have sworn that he was pulling back. But when she took a moment, she saw that that wasn't the case, even though he had begun to absorb some of her blush.
The hue of a rose started to creep from the base of his neck and up to his hollow cheekbones.
Misty tried to hide the fact that as she leaned closer still, her eyes dropped from his to some features of his that looked soft and inviting and resided between his nose and his chin. She didn't know why she tried to disguise this.
Soon enough, her fingers were touching over his own blush on his face. And she had pressed her own lips to the patch of James that had been calling out to her. They had been enticing her for quite some time. But she only just realized that she wanted to do something about it. Could do something about it. And had the bravery to do so.
Their eyelids fluttered shut as Misty pressed a lingering kiss to James' lips. It only dawned on her once she had pulled away that he hadn't kissed her in return. A new kind of blush seized her and it was the kind that stung so badly that she thought like she was going to now resemble a porcelain doll that had permenantly scarlet cheeks.
Misty's eyes squeezed tightly together, telling herself that it was this that she was fearful of, as it dawned on James what had happened and he retook his old position on the ground, his fingers rising to his lips.
For some reason and for a rare occasion, he spelled aloud every single one of his thoughts.
"I... I didn't think that you were going to do that." he said, the whites of his eyes vibrant around irises of green. Misty only recoiled even more, her face tearfully contorting together and her fingers embarrassedly tangling in her bangs.
She could not look at him ever again. She had only just been thinking she would like to keep looking at him. But now she never could.
"I... I'm so s-sorry. That was..." Misty stammered out. But she could not finish that sentence. Did not wish to finish that sentence. She did not even know what it was. Did not want to know what it was. Certainly did not want to know what James thought it was.
Fortunately for her but unbeknownst to her because her eyes were still squeezed tightly shut, blocking out the hope of ever seeing the sunlight again, James lowered his hand confusedly away from his mouth and softened from the second that he saw her anguish.
He never liked to see her upset. Hated seeing her upset. Would do anything to prevent it.
James' lower lip fell into his mouth for half a second, remembering the sensation of her lips on his. He suddenly realized what he wanted to say. What he wanted to do. He didn't know if it would make it better and that was how he usually felt when trying to console her.
But he wanted to try.
James forwent telling her it was okay. He hoped his actions would speak this out louder.
"Maybe we just need to make things even...?" he suggested, his hand wrapping around the wrist of hers attached to one of the hands still in her bangs to self-soothe. He lowered her arm down.
Misty didn't imagine ever opening her eyes again. But she found herself doing this as if she wasn't in charge of her own body when she felt James' fingers on her skin.
Her eyes were pricking with hot tears when she found herself looking at him. She furrowed her brow to hide this.
"H... How do we do that?" Misty hated that she stuttered a second time. She was really making a fool of herself. But all of that self deprecation melted away when she felt James' finger tip reaching out to her and he was lifting the bottom of her chin in the split second before he answered.
This time, it was him looking from her eyes to her lips and he asked:
"Can I kiss you this time...?" he wondered. Misty could have blanched there and then, and it was rather lucky that she was in a place where she could be buried.
She believed that her heart rate could not grow into even more of a frenzy. Despite this, she managed to speak past her pounding pulse. Only one word lived in her mind.
She spelled it out.
"Yes." Misty said. This time, she didn't stammer. James laughed. Not at her. Quietly. Shyly. Two fingers this time were underneath her chin and they had traced from the center of her throbbing neck to be there.
And then, before she knew it, he was leaning in and his hand was on her cheek after tucking a lose strand behind her ear and his lips were on hers. Unlike when she had kissed him, Misty couldn't help but embed her hands in the back of his hair, she kissed him back because it dawned on her that her hands being there brought her so much comfort compared to her own hands in her hair.
Their mouths barely moved as they kissed each other. But the earth rotated all around them both.
But from the second that they pulled away from each other, this time, the guilt began to set in, the confusion set in. Misty began to wonder if it was a habit of his when James found the two fingers that had touched underneath her chin to be covering his own lips again in the seconds after he stopped kissing her.
He looked undeniably confused. But he looked very enticing with his neck all flushed and his hair less neat again even though she had hardly tousled it.
This was when the red hot guilt ate at her as well. How could she think any of this, let alone have done what she had done? They had done?
"We shouldn't be doing this, you have a boyfriend..." James mumbled underneath his breath and from behind his fingers because they were still residing there. He wasn't sure that they would ever drop down.
Misty's heart was now hammering in her chest for a different reason. Or rather, an added reaction. She took a sharp intake of breath as if this would console her. It didn't. She tried not to think of the newfound thing that made all her thoughts and worries lift away from her.
"I do..." she swallowed because the breath of fresh air had not been enough. She couldn't deny this fact even if actions had spoken otherwise. Misty made sure to point out that they were in the same boat though she did not need to. "And you have a wife."
James' fingers finally lowered away from him. They clenched by his side. He looked over at Misty with the same, lingering look that he always did, this time his eyebrows stretching upwards to meet his hairline.
"I do..." James couldn't deny this fact either. He took an inhale as Misty had done, hoping to bring himself clarity. In the end, he only felt bewilderment. It was written all over his face. As he looked over at Misty, he tried not to spell these words out. She willed him not to. But they were undeniable. Soon they were out there. "Then why did that feel so..." James' jaw clenched. He gave up trying to fight it. "Right...?"
A second breath tumbled out of Misty.
These words did too.
"I don't know..." she croaked. She wanted to cry. Like James, she felt so confused. But what else he was feeling, she couldn't be sure of. All that she knew was that she always felt so safe around him and that she could talk to him about anything.
And when she had seen him making those damn flowers, it had privately touched her. Then when he had given them to her, he might as well have given him her heart because in return she knew that he had hers.
Misty didn't know a lot about that day. She didn't know how things had lead up to that moment. All that she knew was that when James leaned back closer to her – at first by his fingers tracing along her cheek and eventually her lips before his own found their way there – it was something she had wanted to do for a while.
For James it was like being granted a wish that he didn't know that he had had. But still, he was going to do everything in his power to go along with it. Because he believed that things happened for a reason. And God, even if there was no reason, then he would make up one.
Because nothing had felt so right in a long time as when Misty had seized the moment and planted her lips on his.
The more that they kissed, the more emboldened that the two of them grew. And during the final kiss of this tale, Misty found her bare legs entangled with James' ones of denim and as he kissed her with both hands on the back of her neck, warmth was gifted from his mouth to hers and she knew that he could teach her a thing or two.
It wasn't like the first kiss that they had shared. And it wasn't their last kiss either. I wish that it was. In fact, I wish that there hadn't been one. I wish that this whole thing hadn't happened. But some tales are out of my control. A lot of them are, really.
And all I can do it speak of them. Learn from them. And realize that everything happens for a reason. Even if you don't want it to. Especially if you don't want it to.
Sometimes people have paths they must tread. Even if it means they become a ghost to you as they must wander their own way.
You just have to pray they come back to you again.
The End.
There you go! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you managed to enjoy even though it raises a lot of questions - certainly about James :D Yes, this time in his life really isn't his best. I've hesitated writing about it because it was a thing that Shannon and I loved making when we were teenagers and as we got older we realised how questionable it all is. But I didn't want to write it out of my stories, even if I do disagree with this kind of thing translating into real life and it doesn't at all reflect a good life choice. However, this year I want to tackle it more. Because like Pikachu says, sometimes things happen that just shouldn't. And you have to talk about them anyway :) This moment in James' life, I think, is unresolved trauma from Jessebelle, abusive parents, quitting Team Rocket and having no idea who he is without that organisation - and a bad falling out with Jorginho. I chose to upload this one now because May 22nd is Ash's canon birthday. Shannon and I gave Misty the birthday of May 19th but she celebrates with Ash on the 22nd instead because of something not very nice in her past. So, tomorrow is their birthday and this is in celebration of that. Although for Ash, it's not really a nice gift. So sorry about that, kid :D Thanks again and I'll be back on the 28th to update Rocket Daze so see you there perhaps!
Amy signing out :3