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Kieran is fuming. Granted, he doesn’t exactly know why he’s this pissed off, because it’s not like he has a legitimate reason but—but still. He nearly barrels into Carmine’s Sinistcha, hard at work preparing two steaming cups of matcha for him and his older sis, in his circular pacing around her dorm room. Infuriatingly enough, Carmine has chosen now to remain silent after the bombshell she’s just dropped on his unsuspecting head—Kieran swears she’s the worst sibling alive. There are sibling rivalries and then there is pure, unadulterated sibling hatred.
“What else did Florian say?” Kieran barely manages to grit out.
“He tried to tell me what a date is right after. The nerve of that guy—as if I haven’t gone on tons already.”
Kieran decides not to point out this obvious lie in favor of stomping his feet some more. He’s acting childish, sure, and perhaps even overdramatic, but he thinks he’s entitled to a mini meltdown after finding out that Drayton took Florian—the person Kieran revolves around, the person he thought he hated so much, it almost consumed him whole, the person he, as he later figured out, might be the teeniest, tiniest bit in love with—on an actual date. Fucking Drayton. Kieran would understand (well, no, he wouldn’t, but he’d be marginally more willing to roll over) if it were any other person asking him out because Kieran unfortunately has eyes and is ruefully aware that the other trainer’s relationship status won’t be single forever but—Drayton?! Just thinking his name gets his blood boiling all over again, boosted by the scalding hot flavor of matcha on his tongue. He thought Drayton had been joking about that stupid cafeteria date the League Club interrupted. Keyword: thought.
“So, that’s it? Florian and Drayton are really dating?”
Carmine smirks that patented smirk of hers that signifies Kieran has fallen right into one of her many traps and folds her arms across her chest. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” says Kieran. He releases his white-knuckled grip on his cup of tea. “But why Drayton?” He can feel his face puckering in disgust, spits Drayton’s name from his lips like he would a bad candy apple.
“The bozo’s certainly lazy but he’s laid-back. He could be Florian’s type.”
“Florian doesn’t like laid-back,” he retorts, a panicky flutter of breath in his lungs. He takes another sip of tea to calm down and tastes nothing but bitter regret. That’s all he can seem to taste these days.
“How would you know? Last I checked, I’m better friends with him than you, Kiki.”
“I know, Sis!” Kieran exclaims in juvenile frustration. “And no, you’re not.” If he were in a cartoon, there would be steam radiating from his ears. Kieran definitely does not have a reason to be this upset, as he inwardly reiterates, but he needs to do something to quell the rage brewing inside of him. It’s like when he found out about Florian’s betrayal all over again except instead of sole, all-encompassing anger consuming him, he feels crushed. He previously thought the lowest he could ever feel was when he was busy pushing himself and his Pokémon past their limits after Ogerpon rejected him, cursing Florian’s name at any chance he could get (and also obsessing over him nonstop but he digresses). It’s crazy how one offhand remark about Florian agreeing to a date sends him plunging further past those despicable depths, straight to overthinking and cursing Drayton’s name with a thousand times the vicious anger he’d reserved for Florian.
“You look an awful lot like someone who does care about who Florian goes on dates with,” simpers Carmine and that’s it, Kieran doesn’t need to stand here and listen to her nonsense. She’s probably trying to rile him up—that’s the only reasonable explanation he can come up with as to why Florian would date Drayton. “Wait, why are—“
Kieran takes great pleasure in slamming his sister’s door shut.
“Hey, um, so—“ Kieran stops, placing his shaky hands on his thighs. Is there any easy way to confront him? His first real friend and he—Florian lied to him and still has the ogre—Ogerpon—but… but Florian also apologized multiple times and he forgave him. Kieran forgave him and he forgives him and he thinks Florian has no right occupying as much of his thoughts as he does.
Right. “I just wanna know as your friend,” he says to his dorm mirror. His reflection leers back at him; he traces one of his eyebags with his pointer finger, grimacing.
Dragonite sniffs behind him, looking imploringly at him for a snack. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get all carried away on you like that.” Running a palm over his face in bitter frustration, he releases the tight breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “I just wanna know as your rival slash friend slash uh...”
Kieran tosses Dragonite a few slices of deli ham, mouth pressed in a thin line. Why is he so hung up on this anyway? Florian isn’t going to be here for much longer, off to go resume the semester with his Paldean friends, the people that lodge a few toxic spikes through his ribcage each time he hears one of their names. He remembers Florian mentioning once that he moved from Galar to Paldea, both much grander regions than Kitakami. There isn’t any solid reason for Florian to like him; Kieran doesn’t get lucky. He lost the chance to be Ogerpon’s trainer: he lost the trust of most of his friends and family: he lost his mind. He can’t lose Florian too, not again.
Why Drayton? Why him, why him, why not me? The green-eyed monster within him asks.
“Flor—wowzers,” greets Kieran, raising an eyebrow when Florian’s violet, hulking mystery of a Pokémon pops out of its Poké Ball. “Hello to you too.”
“Agia!” Miraidon, if he remembers correctly, roars and chirps in delight. He’d find it adorable if he wasn’t also certain that Miraidon is more than capable of introducing Kieran to an early demise. He guesses Florian never let on to his Pokémon that they’d gone through a rift (one that Kieran previously thought he’d never want to repair but life has a funny, convoluted way of throwing him curveballs).
“What’s up?” Florian asks. He lovingly pats his Pokémon on one of the lightning bolt-shaped protrusions from its head twice before he recalls it in a flash of dizzying, white light. Now that Kieran isn’t distracted warily staring into the oddly futuristic eyes of Miraidon, he looks at Florian, at the contrasting bright red of his socks and backpack to his Blueberry Academy uniform and wonders why he’d acted on his impulsivity at all. He spent the better half of his morning tracking Florian down though after a slew of missed calls from his sister’s phone; he has to do something.
“We’re… we made up, right? We’re friends again?”
Florian tilts his head in confusion. “We always were,” he says with a tiny frown.
Kieran blinks, padlocking Florian’s expression in a hidden recess of his brain before he has the chance to overthink a three-word sentence any further. “Uh, so, I was gonna ask… what have you and er, Drayton been up to?” He barely resists the urge to smack his palm on his forehead. That’s surely the subtlest way to glean information from a person.
“Me and Drayton?” Florian asks. He glances skyward for a moment, pursing his lips before his eyes light up. “Nothing really… he traded me a Duraludon recently; wanna see?”
So this is how it’s going to be (again). Kieran wonders if he walks around with a glaring neon sign above his head proclaiming, “Please lie to me!” Before he can lose his temper, however, he counts to five in his head. It’s not the most effective technique but a work in progress is a work in progress is what he attempts to remind himself every day.
“No, I—no,” says Kieran. He backtracks when Florian visibly wilts, sheepishly withdrawing his hand from where it’d presumably been searching for Duraludon’s Poké Ball. “You haven’t done anything with him that you might—wanna tell a friend about?” Kieran queries, stilted. He actively has to ensure that his eye doesn’t twitch.
“… No?” Florian says. He squints at him as if Kieran’s a puzzle he can’t piece together. “Was I supposed to do something with him?”
“No!” Kieran rushes out a bit too quickly. “Nothing. I think you should tell him that though.”
“That I’m not doing anything with him?” Florian asks. His bemusement fades into amusement and Kieran doesn’t normally tolerate being the butt of the joke anymore, but Florian is something markedly close to an angel when he’s happy. He looks to a minuscule body of water for answers and only finds his wavering reflection.
Knocking his left fist against his thigh, he softens his stance. If Florian doesn’t want to tell him about his date (dates?) with Drayton… fine. He doesn’t need to tell Kieran every minor detail of his life even though he thought friends (or what once was) confided in each other about these sorts of things, even though he seemingly has no issue blabbing to Carmine about his date, even though it’s a knife to the abdomen to know the unspoken truth behind Florian’s evasion.
“Whatever,” concedes Kieran. “Forget I said anythin’.”
“All right… are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah,” lies Kieran, biting the inside of his cheek to stifle the pool of frustration welling in his stomach, “just hungry.”
“In that case, do you want to go to the cafeteria? I could destroy some Academy fries right now.”
Wouldn’t you rather go with Drayton? Kieran thinks but doesn’t say aloud. Florian releases Miraidon, instructing it to fly them to Blueberry Academy’s entrance. His arms around Kieran’s waist are a cage he never wants to escape from. He lets his eyelashes flutter closed against the windchill, roaming Pokémon and people becoming little more than specks dotting the vast landscape of the Terarium. If he leans further into the touch, savors the feeling of Florian’s chest pressed to his back, then that’s no one’s business but his own.
“What’s going on?” Crispin’s high-pitched voice startles Kieran into knocking the side of his head against a marbled pillar. Clutching his temple in pain, he glares at Crispin and yanks him behind his temporary hiding place; hasn’t this guy ever heard of inside voices? Probably not considering the number of times he’s scared the living crap out of Kieran without intending to do so—Crispin has never heard of the term subtle before, he’d bet his entire collection of Tera Shards on it. He supposes he isn’t the embodiment of subtlety himself but that’s beside the point. “Are we hiding from—”
“Shh!” Kieran hisses, slapping a palm over Crispin’s big, loud mouth, recoiling in disgust when Crispin licks it not a second later. He inhales a steady stream of air through his nostrils to prevent himself from blowing up on the other boy and subsequently, ruining his afternoon plans of checking up on Florian. Some people, like his nuisance of an older sister, would call what he’s doing spying. Kieran prefers to think of it as field research.
“Glad to hear that, bud,” drawls Drayton. Kieran clenches his teeth as Drayton’s fingers curl over Florian’s wrist, lingering for one, two, three seconds too long. “You should let him hang out with my Archaludon soon. I’m sure he misses his little brother.”
“For sure, just text me. How’s Frigibax?”
Florian gave Drayton a Frigibax? Kieran’s never heard of such a Pokémon, assuming this so-called Frigibax is one. What makes Drayton so special, what made him pick out a Frigibax over any other abundance of Pokémon in the world? He makes a mental note to delve into a Frigibax-related rabbit hole later.
“This is boring,” enunciates Crispin, nearly succeeding in giving Kieran a coronary. He’d forgotten the other boy was there, enraptured by the mundane conversation happening twelve feet away. He still wants to smack that lazy smirk off Drayton’s face, wants to drag Florian to his dorm room and never again make the mistake of letting him go, wants Florian to smile at him (only him) and offer to trade him Frigibaxes, wants early mornings and sun-drenched afternoons and late nights, wants and wants and wants. He doesn’t ever get, unfortunately.
“Shut up,” snarls Kieran. “No one asked you to hide with me,” he adds in a whisper.
Crispin narrows his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. “Fine. You don’t have to tell me twice.”
To Kieran’s horror, Crispin marches over to Florian and Drayton, slipping into their conversation with the practiced ease of the extrovert Kieran wishes he could be. He doesn’t dare to stick around, hightailing it once he hears Florian laugh at something Crispin said, an ardent ache in his lungs. He’s tasted defeat at the hands of Florian many times before, but it’s never tasted as bitter as it does now, like he’d gotten his hands on a pickle sandwich loaded with vinegar, topped with acidic regret and the glint in Florian’s eyes when Kieran had met him out on the pitch for that fated championship match.
“Aw man,” he mumbles as he stares at himself in the bathroom mirror. There’s a crack in the corner courtesy of Kieran taking his anger out on various inanimate objects in his dorm, splintering a painting Kieran had pinned up of Paldea shortly after he’d found out Florian attends school there. He had ripped the painting in half and subsequently taped it back together, but glancing at it through the cracked reflection gives him a horrid feeling of emptiness. He’s been trying to outrun that feeling for a while, been trying to focus on mending his friendships (minus Crispin for now) and establishing an identity apart from Carmine, but he feels like he’s back where he started. He’s that same idiot in Kitakami who went googly-eyed over the first person to treat him like something worthy—that same idiot who never was worthy of anything and flew too close to the sun. No wonder Florian chose Drayton, not that Kieran was ever a choice in the first place.
Kieran doesn’t think it’s too healthy to place his entire mental well-being on Florian’s relationship status, but then again, when has anything he’s done been beneficial?
“Hola,” greets Florian with a cheesy wink when Kieran finally answers his door. He thought the knocking would eventually go away if he acted as though he wasn’t home but he’s extraordinarily glad he gave in and answered.
“Hi!” Kieran exclaims, clearing his throat. “Um—hi.”
“I thought you died for a minute there,” Florian says as casually as he would announce the weather, strolling into Kieran’s dorm like he owns the place. “What were you doing anyway?”
I’ve been busy pretending that I don’t want to tear Drayton apart with my bare hands; just another day in paradise! Kieran thinks (knows) the other boy wouldn’t appreciate that answer even if angry moping is honestly all he’s doing lately with his spare time. “Cleaning.”
Florian crosses the room to sit on his bed, long legs splayed over the navy-blue fibers of Kieran’s carpet. “Looks nice in here.”
“Thanks...” Kieran swallows, retreating to the fridge to occupy himself with providing refreshments. A half-chugged gallon of apple juice and three cans of a disgusting seltzer Carmine had pawned off on him last week are all that are in his paltry refrigerator, so he settles for water instead, feeling like a horrible host.
Florian at least doesn’t point out his lack of manners, accepting the cup with a grateful smile, and Kieran is left to hover awkwardly around the foot of his bed, twiddling his nervous thumbs.
“Oh,” says Florian, scooching over and patting the space beside him. “My bad, didn’t mean to steal your whole bed.”
“That’s not—“ Kieran replies, deciding not to finish that sentence. “What’re you doing here? Is Drayton busy?” He tries to school his facial features into something more ambiguous than outright annoyance while Florian blinks at him.
“Maybe I just wanted to see you,” utters Florian. He smells like wild grass and lavender, a bit of an odd combo, but it’s so unmistakably Florian, he notes with an all too familiar twinge of his heartstrings. “And I don’t think he is. Why; should I text him?”
“No!” Kieran exclaims too loudly. “Uh—I just don’t… understand.”
Florian is quiet for a few beats of excruciating silence. He has that look on his face that he adorns sometimes during a battle, brown eyes clouded over in a calculating haze, pink mouth slightly parted. Kieran licks his dry lips, stares at his battle court diagram and scribbled post-its taped to the walls, thinking, Why? Why would you want to see me? And then, embarrassingly enough, Maybe I just want to see you too. Maybe I never want to stop seeing you.
“What aren’t you understanding?” Florian asks hesitantly, hushed even though they’re alone. He’s kind of surprised one of their Pokémon hasn’t burst out of its Poké Ball yet especially taking into account that Florian seems to carry the most energetic Pokémon team ever. His cup of water is a leaden weight in his clammy palms.
“I don’t get why you… um. Like, y’know, if I were you, I’d wanna spend all my time with my boyfr—“ His voice cracks. “Boyfriend before I have to leave.”
Florian’s eyebrows shoot to the roof. “I’m—huh?”
Kieran offers a meek shrug, gnawing the inside of his cheeks, painfully familiar with the metallic tang he draws moments later.
“Okay, hold on, did you say boyfriend?” Florian straightens himself out, turning to face Kieran with an intensity that makes him want to regress to his old hairstyle. He’s practically swimming in his Blueberry Academy assigned jacket and Kieran can hardly appreciate the fact that they’re unintentionally matching because Florian is way too close. That and it’s a school uniform—of course, they’d match. It has nothing to do with Kieran.
“Y-yeah?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” says Florian incredulously. “Not that I’d be opposed.”
It breaks Kieran’s heart to realize that Florian still doesn’t have an issue lying to him. Is he an idiot for naively believing in second chances? He already knows the answer to that hypothetical question. “You’re a bad liar.”
“But I’m not lying,” answers Florian. He has a little knit between his brows that Kieran somehow has the urge to smooth with the pad of his thumb. He’s pathetic, really, for entertaining this notion for longer than a fleeting second and he needs Florian to back up. “Who exactly do you think my boyfriend is?”
“Drayton,” Kieran says with a roll of his eyes. “I heard about your lunch dates. I saw you on one.”
“I don’t think he asked me on actual dates...” Florian trails off, cocking his head in confusion.
“Does he know that?”
“Hm,” says Florian before Kieran can practically see the lightbulb go off above his head. It hurts; he can’t pretend it doesn’t. Fortunately, he has experience hiding his true feelings which is defining him as a mild hypocrite for not being honest with Florian, granted, but he’s also not the one hiding an entire relationship. “Why don’t we call him?”
Before Kieran has the chance to think—or even breathe for that matter—Florian has his Rotom phone on speakerphone, the dial tone droning on for a few frightening seconds. His heart pounds in his chest, three sizes too big for his skin, and there’s a faint hint of blood coating his incisors. All the world has been reduced to the outcome of a singular phone call and he doesn’t have the best feeling about this. He bets on losing Arcanines where Florian is concerned.
“Hullo?” Drayton’s somnolent voice answers from the other end. Kieran frowns as Florian exchanges a few rounds of pleasantries, eyes glued to the grin curling the corners of Florian’s lips. Thud, thud, thud.
“So, you remember when you asked me out a while ago?”
“… I did?” Drayton asks, sounding lost. Kieran petulantly ignores the smug smile Florian sends his way. “’Ight, I’ll bite. Go on.”
“Were those actual dates? Got something you’d like to confess?” Florian asks, struggling to contain the stream of laughter that wants to pour out of him. Kieran doesn’t understand what part of this stupid conversation thus far is supposed to be funny, but he remains quiet, too scared to hear confirmation of his worst nightmare. Sleepless nights spent out in the Terarium with the afterimage of Florian imprinted on the forefront of his mind and skipping days’ worth of meals over the past few months have nothing on this level of torture.
“Dude. The Drayster can’t be locked down, c’mon now.”
Florian shifts, fingertips ghosting his. Maybe Florian was telling the truth. A labored breath, a rush of blood. Please be mine, pleasebemine.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Plus, the ol’ ex-Champ would kill me.”
Florian raises his eyebrows at Kieran, more amused than he has any right to be. Kieran makes yet another mental pact to follow through on Drayton’s fears—how the rest of the League Club members can stand him is a mystery. Lacey seems to agree with him but Lacey is also extremely intolerant of laziness rather than the problem lying simply with Drayton as a person. “Is that so?”
“Just between you and me, that kid’s got a major crush on you. He was obsessed, couldn’t go one peaceful lunch period without your name coming up within a minute.”
Kieran rapidly shakes his head no, wishing with all of his might for the ground to open up and swallow him whole. The universe does not listen to him as per usual.
“You think so? What would he say about me?” Florian asks, a shit-eating grin plastered on his face. Kieran doesn’t know what it says about him that he has the overwhelming urge to tackle him, to kiss him until he can’t remember where he starts and where Florian ends. He’s sure that his face is hot enough to ignite a wildfire despite them being in the middle of the ocean.
“I’m gonna squash Florian next time I see him. He won’t know what hit him! Has he tried to get into contact with you? D’ya think Florian’s training right now? I hope he is, I wanna earn this victory,” Drayton recounts in a high-pitched mockery of Kieran’s voice. “No one talks about someone they hate that much.”
“Interesting,” replies Florian. He rolls his lips together, clicking his tongue before he tells Drayton that he’s going to hang up to work on homework. A flimsy excuse but it works. “So...”
“Wha—huh?” Kieran chokes out, too flustered to scrounge up anything better to say.
“… Is he right?” Florian asks quietly. He scratches the back of his neck, suddenly bashful like he was when Kieran first met him in Kitakami, and he remembers thinking that Florian is awfully pretty when he blushes. He still does.
“That—that doesn’t…” Kieran heaves a world-weary sigh. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering to delay the inevitable, why he let himself hold out any hope in the first place for something more when he’s lucky Florian even agreed to be his friend. Florian is special, spends his days training up Pokémon that make Kieran tremble at the knees, always off on the next grand adventure because everyone on the planet wants a piece of Florian—Kieran doesn’t have a place in his life. He hasn’t deserved it, and Drayton hasn’t either, not by a long shot. He’s just one of Florian’s many admirers, he realizes belatedly, a bitter coldness settling in his bones.
Florian hasn’t responded, prompting him to establish eye contact for all of a shaky two seconds, regretting it as soon as he does. The indecipherable visage scribbled across Florian’s normally expressive face only makes him feel worse.
“You hated me. I assumed… why would you—” Florian cuts himself off, mouth twisting into a pensive pout. “Do you?”
“Do I what?” Kieran asks though he sounds like he’s underwater and time has been halted to a syrupy stop. He doesn’t think his heart pounded this hard during his Championship battle with Florian or in his challenge for ownership of Ogerpon, as if he’s one more painful thump away from melting into a mortified mess on the floor.
“Do you like me?” Florian asks. It should be so simple. How can Kieran properly convey how much he revolves around Florian—how the thought of him with anyone else makes him want to gouge his eyes out, how much he wants Florian to find someone better than him and simultaneously sink his claws into him until Florian can’t see anyone but Kieran, how much he…
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Oh,” says Florian and nothing else. It’s a fitting response for a nobody like him.
“Sorry,” says Kieran for lack of anything better to say.
“Don’t apologize.” Florian lets out a little nervous giggle. He runs a hand through his shaggy brown strands of hair and Kieran never thought he’d be jealous of an appendage before but here he is. “I was kind of hoping you’d say yes though.”
“... What if I did?” Kieran gets out after twenty long seconds pass them by, positive that he’s going to die any second now, or worse—what if this is nothing more than an elaborate dream? What if he wakes up to an empty dorm and emptier sheets? He blinks the stray tears gathering in his waterline away and attempts to focus on Florian’s unwavering gaze, on his long eyelashes where they cast shadows on the apples of his cheeks.
Florian bites his lip, glancing down. “I would’ve asked to kiss you.”
Kieran’s brain flatlines. He swears he’s seeing stars when Florian lightly cups his jaw, a silent question in his brown irises before he exhales an unsteady breath that makes Kieran shiver. He closes his palm over Florian’s as he leans closer, hardly able to hear with the blood rushing in his ears, jittery like he’s received a Thunderbolt to the chest. Florian is the first to bridge the gap and it’s an unceremonious press of lips to impossibly soft lips, nothing too special, but Kieran is addicted. Florian moves back after a few seconds but Kieran doesn’t let him stray, fisting his other hand in Florian’s jacket to drag him back in, tries to convey I love you, I love you more than I can handle, I love you through the desperation of his kisses.
It could have been minutes, it could have been hours of innocent kisses traded back and forth; Kieran has no sense of time nor any willingness to stop as long as Florian is allowing this to happen. Kieran doesn’t get lucky… but maybe he does. Just this once.
“We really need to get you a phone,” tuts Florian, sprawled out on a picnic blanket. Kieran nods, burying his face further into Florian’s shoulder, only half listening in all honesty. The warmth of the sun shining through the dome, not to mention their impulse decision to have a picnic in the Coastal biome, is dredging up wave after wave of sleepiness. “How else am I supposed to annoy my cute boyfriend all the time?”
“Boyfriend?” Kieran mumbles, unable to keep the swarms of Butterfree flitting about his stomach under control as he slings an arm over Florian’s waist. That single word is like music to his ears, like he’s won the lottery.
“… You want to be my boyfriend, don’t you?”
It’s not often that Florian gets insecure about anything—come to think of it, Kieran can only think of a couple instances; the Area Zero disaster situation and his fears that catching the Loyal Three would cause massive conflict in his team, conflicts he wouldn’t be able to reconcile. Kieran had been too busy seething with hatred to offer any sort of reassurance to the person who, at the time, had crushed his dreams, but he would overhear Carmine constantly talking about the situation to their grandparents.
“More than anythin’,” he speaks into Florian’s shoulder, almost drowned out by the sounds of nature surrounding them but he intuits that Florian heard him. He thinks, very drowsily, that he could stay in this position for eternity.
“Good.” Florian wiggles his arm around, effectively tugging Kieran closer (how on earth he did that considering he was already attached to him like a limpet to its shell, Kieran will never know). “Anyway, about that phone—”
“Aw man, do I have to get one?”
Kieran can’t see his face but he knows Florian is wearing that smile that makes him a little weak in the knees. “Maybe I’ll buy one for you. Boyfriend privileges or something.”
Boyfriend privileges. Huh. Kieran could get used to that.