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A tower of towels barrels in his direction. It takes some fancy footwork for Drew to narrowly avoid the harried trainer desperate to make a quick buck. They stammer out a quick apology before stumbling into the elevator Drew just slid out of, leaving the coordinator thankful for the Gogoat ‘Gurt sponsorship that led him to be a guest at Hotel Richissime instead of strapped for cash.
Not that Lumiose City hasn’t tried its best to bleed him dry ever since he stepped foot into the glittering tourist trap. He doesn’t like having to use his hard-earned yogurt money for Lumi Cabs, but he also can’t afford to waste any time getting lost on his way to register at the Grand Festival Hall. He has a strict training schedule to stick to — one that’s immediately derailed the second an unfamiliar car pulls up beside him as he's exiting the Hall.
The window rolls down slowly, revealing May in the driver’s seat and her munchlax in the passenger’s. Her wingman has a city map in its chubby little hands, which has a shiny sticker indicating where the Grand Festival Hall is located. An upbeat Kalos pop song is blaring through the car’s radio speakers, and May has the decency to turn down the volume before asking, “Need a ride?”
Her hands are draped over the wheel a bit too casually, and her tone is unnaturally cool. Drew wonders if she actually spent time rehearsing this, that May had been waiting to pull this move on someone, keeping her driving skills deliberately under wraps until she could pull off the perfect entrance.
It’s an admittedly charming sight. “Since when do you drive?” he asks, unable to help himself from being openly curious.
“Professor Birch taught me a while back,” she explains, and Drew is forever impressed at how she turns name-dropping into an art. From anyone else, it’d sound too corny. “Cab fare in this city is insane. I did the math and a rental made more economic sense.” Her munchlax makes a little grunt in agreement right before chewing at the corner of the map. May doesn’t even have to look away from Drew as she gently swats at her pokémon and stops it from completely devouring Route 14.
“We’re on our way to dinner,” she says to placate her perpetually hungry passenger. “There’s this place on Estival Avenue that’s supposed to make these amazing Kanto-style noodles.”
They’ve gone through this dance so many times that May knows Drew will accept her invitation, even without her needing to verbally invite him. His apparent predictability doesn’t bother him as much as he wishes it would.
Drew still has enough pride to take a moment to think about his carefully crafted training schedule and the five-starred meal waiting for him at the hotel’s restaurant. Then he stops thinking, and he’s sliding into the backseat, catching May’s eye in the rearview mirror. It’s the last moment of peace they have before May jolts the car onto the main road.
As it turns out, Professor Birch was not a very good teacher, and Drew has no idea how they managed to make it to the restaurant without any casualties. “In real life, you don’t get extra points for driving into pedestrians,” he gripes as he stumbles out of the car on shaky legs. May makes an obscene gesture with her right hand and uses her left to pull open the restaurant door for him.
The interior is rather unremarkable in Drew's opinion, though May makes a point to comment on how it looks just like an authentic Kanto noodle bar. He’ll have to take her word for it since she’s the expert on the subject; it’s far from the first time she’s cajoled him into a noodle bar.
He heads to the bathroom soon after they're seated at the bar, ignoring May’s teasing comment about how he needs to “freshen up.” Still, he does spend several minutes adjusting his hair in the mirror so that it falls in his eyes just so. When he returns he finds May with a firm grip on her munchlax, stopping it from making any more attempts to hop out of its chair and swipe at another customer’s food.
“Wonder where it gets the bad table manners from,” he says coolly as he slides into the seat next to hers, pointedly avoiding May’s burning glare to watch her munchlax wriggle shamelessly in its seat. Even after all these years, May still makes it too easy for him to goad her. There's something comforting about that, though Drew knows better than to dwell on that feeling for too long.
The human waiters seem to be ignoring them outright, opting to take orders from patrons Drew knows arrived after they did. Right as he’s about to complain about the poor service, the proud pangoro behind the bar dutifully places three steaming bowls in front of them, along with a litany of traditional Kanto side dishes. Drew knows just by looking at his ramen that this is what he wanted, but can’t recall verbally asking for it.
“Did you order for me?” he asks May, even though he knows better than to interrupt her when she’s in the middle of a meal. He wants to be irritated, but he can’t; she got his meticulous order down pat. That leaves him feeling some other type of way.
Thankfully, May doesn’t look too annoyed as she stops slurping her noodles long enough to confirm his suspicions. “Miso with extra firm noodles, right?”
Drew doesn’t immediately respond, needing a moment to process two very important realizations. The first is that they have gotten ramen together so many times that May has his go-to order memorized. The second is that he’s not very adventurous when dining out. The pause leads to May shifting uncomfortably in her seat, and Drew hates that he can’t just say “thank you” and enjoy the meal like a normal person, instead of making her feel bad for knowing him so well.
“Maybe I wanted something different this time.” May doesn’t look too convinced, which bothers him more than it should. He doesn’t want her to think of him as predictable or boring, even when it comes to something as inconsequential as dinner. “I don’t always get the same thing.”
Except that he did, because he wasn’t actually a big fan of most ramen. It was something he’d never admit out loud to May, who’s declared it as her go-to comfort meal on more than one occasion. They’ve gone out to so many ramen bars together, all at her request, and at this point it’d be impossible for him to explain why he forced himself to eat so much of it with her. If he was actually as suave as his persona made him out to be, he would’ve insisted on taking her out to much nicer restaurants ages ago. But she was always the brave one, which meant that he typically ended up following her into whatever hole-in-the-wall joint her stomach desired.
Her munchlax, completely oblivious to the awkward tension, makes grabby-hands at Drew’s untouched bowl. May doesn’t even look in its direction when she pokes at it with one of her chopsticks.
“Order what you want,” she tells Drew. “I’ll eat the miso bowl.” Her munchlax groans in disappointment, and May rolls her eyes. “Fine, we’ll split it,” she relents, and starts to call for a waiter before he stops her.
“No, it’s alright. I like it. I'll eat it.” The munchlax somehow manages to deliver a dirty look, so Drew tosses his soft-boiled egg into the pokémon’s mouth as a gesture of goodwill.
May frowns while her munchlax makes a contented noise. “You didn’t have to do that. Munchlax is spoiled enough as it is.”
“That’s not my fault.”
May leers at him, yet she does end up ordering a second bowl for both her and her munchlax while he’s still working through his first. Drew knows that she would’ve ordered a third if a fan hadn’t approached their table.
The girl’s much younger than they are, with lanky limbs and stars in her wide eyes. She’s as genuine as they come, but Drew still can’t help but brace himself in her presence. It’s one thing to have a stadium full of strangers cheering on his pokémon, with the blinding stage lights creating a safe barrier between him and the crowd. But he never had an easy time being approached by admirers; he knows how to act in front of judges and other coordinators, but members of his own fanclub still make him feel uncomfortable even after all these years. The only thing that's changed between now and the first time he was accosted by a groupie is that he has since mastered countless different ways to exit a conversation unnoticed.
May, on the other hand, managed to befriend brick walls. She viewed every stranger as a potential friend, a fact that only bolstered the public's perception of her as some kind of hometown "princess." May knew exactly how to take the reins in these situations, ensuring that Drew didn’t accidentally offend the young girl with his aloofness. She’d given him plenty of grief in the past for not being more personable with people who held nothing but admiration for him and his skills. Drew is certain that he’d get an earful later, long after she realized he slipped out of the booth with a cool farewell and left her to entertain their new guest alone. He tries to make up for it in advance by discretely paying for their bill before heading back outside.
He didn’t plan to wait for her; disappearing into the night had always been more his style. But he found that he had no desire to end their fortuitous meeting this way. It was a foolish move — for all he knew, May planned to sample everything on the menu for the rest of the night, as she was wont to do. He would look silly, lingering outside when she probably expected him to leave without a word. But he hated the idea of playing into her worst expectations of him more than he disliked the idea of looking like a lovesick fool. So he stayed, leaning against the rental car while watching an animated billboard of Champion Diantha twirling around her gardevoir on a loop.
May arrived only a few moments later, and Drew's not certain that he wouldn’t have waited all night for her to return. Her munchlax is noticeably absent, and if Drew were a betting man he'd wager all his sponsorship money on the gluttonous beast falling asleep before being called back to its pokéball.
“You didn’t get dessert?” he asks, pointedly ignoring the surprised expression that arises on her face when she finally notices him leaning against her rental car.
“There’s a place nearby that’s supposed to make incredible profiterole,” May tells him in lieu of commenting on what they’re both thinking about. It’s well established that Drew has a history of being the first to leave, but she’s only recently realized that he tends to wait around for her before making that dramatic exit. May is a lot like him in that way — she cares too much about her own aspirations to waste time fixating on the deeper meaning behind why Drew will reorganize his entire schedule to make sure he can give her a proper farewell.
Her eyes are drawn to the Diantha billboard, and she watches the Champion twirl several times before she finally asks, “Want to walk there with me?” The invitation was, once again, unneeded. But he's grateful for it, anyhow.
“Anything to keep you from getting behind the wheel.” Right as she looks ready to bite his head off, he leans forward and kisses her.
It’s not their first kiss or even their second. They spent nearly a decade teetering on the lines of rivals and friends and something more; they were always bound to give in to the tension that’s been held precariously between them since they first met.
Drew can’t remember who kissed who first, all those years ago; the only fact that’s worth knowing is that he can't kiss her as often as he’d like to. It’s not a relationship — not in the traditional sense. He's unsure if either of them wants that, or if they’re even able to commit the way society expects them to. When it comes to May, all Drew has ever known is that he lives for these brief, rare moments where there’s no countdown, no training schedules, no ribbons — just them, holding each other under a cover of foreign streetlights.
“That was forward of you,” she says softly when they break, leaning her forehead against his. Her words have a mocking edge to them and he can feel her smiling, so he assumes that she’s not too bothered by his abrupt interruption.
“I got tired of waiting for the ‘right’ moment.” It’s not the most romantic thing he could say, but Drew has always been better at communicating his feelings through flowers rather than actual words. May seems to understand him even without the roses.
She pulls away right as he starts to lean back in, and she’s stammering out an apology before he even has the chance to question her. “I know I’m the one who invited you out, and yet I haven’t given you my full attention.” Drew tries his best to focus on the words she’s saying, instead of getting distracted by how the rosy, embarrassed flush on May’s cheeks makes her look ethereal in the Kalos twilight. “I’ll try to be a better date for the rest of the night.”
“I don’t mind sharing your attention,” he says honestly, trying to keep himself from talking too fast and making sure he doesn’t sound too desperate. What he almost says is, I don’t mind sharing you — with her career that she lives for, with the pokémon that depend on her, or with the fans that won’t let her leave her pedestal.
The quiet romantic in him — the part of him that will never stop leaving a trail of roses for her to follow — wishes he could shed his pride fully in front of her. He likes the idea of being honest enough to express just how badly he wants her, in whatever way she’ll let him have her. And she probably does know, or at least she has a good idea of it — she’s spent her youth studying him as closely as he’s been studying her. They were rivals first, after all.
But that’s also the reason why he never allowed himself to be as vulnerable as they’d both like for him to be. It’s so simple it doesn’t need to be explained out loud, but Drew still feels like he should be the one apologizing to her.
“Hazards of the job,” May responds, saving him from himself. She combs her fingers through his hair so casually, as if this was a common occurrence between the two of them. “You get it.”
“I do.” Because he does, better than anyone else can. There will always be pokémon to train and other coordinators to watch out for and more contests to obsess over. They have never been the type of people who can devote themselves fully to a person. They both have a goal that they want more than each other, and it doesn’t upset him the way it probably should. In the end, it’ll always his name she proclaims whenever she's asked about what motivates her to be better. He’ll take that over a traditional commitment any day.
Drew would have stood on that street the entire night without complaint if May agreed to spend all that time kissing him, but she has dessert on the brain and he has a schedule to stick to. A meticulous schedule that begins with an extensive nighttime skincare routine and sleeping at a reasonable hour, all so that he can wake up early enough to do another skincare routine and then train, train, train until he can smell nothing but rose petals for the rest of the week.
He doesn’t tell May any of this just yet, only partly because she doesn’t need the extra ammunition. She surely has her own inane pre-contest schedule to stick to; they both know that there’s a time limit on how much longer they can play tourist. He makes the most of it by buying her several different cream puffs, even after she makes a teasing remark about how she’d love some yogurt to go with it.
“Don’t ask me for any — I’m just the pretty face,” he says, a line he’s delivered far too many times.
May never lets him get away with it. “You do look a bit like a gogoat.”
“A very rich gogoat who can afford a room at the Hotel Richissime.” He is fully aware that he sounds like an asshole, like the snotty ten-year-old who always had something to prove. He still dodges when May flicks a well-deserved balled-up napkin in his direction.
“For your sake, I hope that ‘pretty face’ is insured.”
“Do you want to see it?”
“I see enough of you whenever I’m in the dairy aisle.”
“I was talking about my hotel room.”
And now May is properly rendered speechless. There are a couple of crumbs against her flushed face, and Drew focuses on not letting his hand shake as he brushes them off. His fingers only graze her cheek for a moment, but it feels like he burnt himself on the stove when he pulls away.
“They only had a double available when I booked it. I don’t mind sharing.” It’s the second time tonight that he’s expressed this sentiment, but the words linger more heavily in the air now.
“So they just gave you two beds?” she asks, no doubt mentally comparing his digs to her own humble accommodations at the Pokémon Center.
Drew takes that moment to steal one of May’s cream puffs, hoping to distract her from the red flush that’s now blooming on his face. “No, it’s one bed made to fit two people.” Nervous about her reaction, he very quickly adds, “And it also has one of those fancy pull-out couches. So there’s more than enough room.”
“Knowing how much moisturizer you pack, I highly doubt it.” He snorts, thankful that she’s unable to pick up on his awkwardness. Or maybe he’s just better at hiding it than he thought he was. He's developed a habit of underestimating himself around her, even when they’re offstage.
May doesn’t torture him by making him wait for her answer. “If it’s not an inconvenience for you, then sure. Thank you.” She appears more confident than he feels, but he knows that looks can be deceiving. Her fingers haven’t stopped fidgeting with the edges of her gloves.
Drew has this grossly intimate urge to intertwine her fingers with his, if only to stop them from their nervous wriggling. He instead leaves the table to get another batch of cream puffs for the road. They manage to find something else to bicker about as they head over to Pokémon Center to pick up May’s things, before driving back to North Boulevard.
May predictably oohs and aahs at all the opulence in the hotel lobby. Drew stops himself from asking why she doesn't sell her soul to consumerism and get a brand to pay for her room and board in exchange for her endorsement. He already knows her morals are a bit stricter than his, and that May also spends most of what she makes producing that internet show of hers. Besides, it's not as if he's unhappy about this arrangement.
“I’m surprised you’re not filming this experience for May’s Expedition,” he says instead, wanting her to know that he does, in fact, make an effort to keep up with her ventures outside of the contest circuit.
May misses the deeper meaning and gives him a funny look. “I don’t think I could afford whatever it is you charge for an on-camera appearance.”
Drew can’t help but laugh at that. “I’d give you the 'friend’s discount.' But I was actually referring to the hotel. I’m sure your viewers would just love a supercut of every crystal chandelier they managed to fit into this swanky building.”
“I don't think that'd work for the Lumiose Badlands episode I just shot.” Despite that, she still whips out her camera and expertly zooms in on one of the aforementioned chandeliers that even Drew finds ostentatious. “You never know, though,” she says.
Drew leaves her to do her thing for a bit, only interfering when another trainer stumbles down the hall in her direction. Drew quickly nudges May out of the trainer's way, who he guesses was in a rush to make sure every pillow in the building is occupied by a piece of chocolate. “Let’s go up before we’re run over by the proletariat.” May swats at him for that comment, though she still tucks the camera away and sticks close by as they enter the elevator.
They both dump their things on the pull-out. They each insist it’s because the other trainer should take the double bed, even though they both know they’ll just end up silently agreeing to share it. It’s another song-and-dance they’ve gone through before; they’re both incapable of taking what they want without putting up a fight for it first. It’s the foundation for their entire relationship, professional and otherwise.
May then insists that he talk her through every step of his skincare regime, only so she can mock him ruthlessly throughout the whole process and act aghast at the cost of his eye cream. Despite the cruelty, he still lets May slather her face in the overpriced moisturizer he bought at a boutique in Laverre City. May thanks him by forcing him to try on a sheet mask that's designed to look like a slurpuff’s face. He only agrees once she definitively proves that her camera is turned off.
With their faces dewy, they finally sprawl onto the bed without embarrassment to go over their individual schedules for the next day. It’s partly to make sure they’re not in each other’s way, but it’s mostly so that they can get some insight into the other person’s plans leading up to the festival without having to ask outright. Knowing that Drew is a chronic morning person, May insists that he wake her up early, too, so that she can get the “good” breakfast pastries from the hotel’s bakery. Drew already planned to bring her breakfast the next morning (though he has no idea which croissants fall under her specific definition of “good”), but he still promises that he’ll blare his alarm loud enough to ensure that all the guests on their floor will hate them.
With their respective sleep masks on — May’s embroidered with wide-open cartoon eyes and Drew’s a luxurious plain black satin gifted to him by the hotel — they crawl under the sheets without any expectations. Drew is unable to stick to his own schedule and struggles to fall into sleep, somehow managing to feel simultaneously relaxed and anxious in May's presence. He knows that in the morning they’ll go back to being rivals, seeking each other out only when they think they can get some type of advantage out of it. Drew will be so focused on perfecting his routines that he won’t think about kissing her until the winner is decided.
But right now, he’s agonizing over whether or not it’s a good idea to wrap his arm around her waist and pull her close the way he wants to. There’s always a role to play — rival, companion, lover — and the lines always seem to blur when she’s this close to him in the dark.
May chooses for him, entangling her legs with his as she rests her head on his chest. Drew finally allows himself to pull her close, and the distance between them is temporarily erased. He's convinced that she's able to hear how loudly his heart is beating in this position, but it feels so right that he can't bring himself to feel insecure about it. It's temporary, anyhow. It will always be temporary because they will always choose to separate. It’s not a heartbreaking decision; Drew knows that the only thing that could upset him would be having to pick between being great or being with her. And May has never forced him to make any decision she wouldn’t want to make herself.
He has her right now, and that's more than enough. He’ll take all the bowls of ramen and fleeting kisses she’ll give him in private, so long as she doesn't hold back her punches on stage. It may be temporary, but so is everything else in their lives.