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☀☀☀
She loves him in the summer, as the hot Sun beats down on dry soil and the beaches fill up with tourists. She knows he’s not at all a fan of Hoenn’s notorious heat, or its notorious crowds by the shore. So they find a hideaway beach that her brother made her swear she’d keep secret, and they swim until the Sun sinks low enough to be bearable. Then she starts a fire, and they cook a meal.
He doesn’t need to eat the way she does – he gets most of his energy through photosynthesis, like any other Grass-type. But she’s picked up enough tricks from her dad’s cooking that her grilled Magikarp smells good enough to entice even an autotroph. He grows seasonings for her, rosemary and garlic cloves and lemon hanging from his shoulders, and rests while she puts them to good use.
Summertime is palpably nostalgic for May. She doesn’t get nearly as many summer hours with him as the years creep by, but when he does have the time to visit home, he always saves a day like this for her. And they both complain the whole way there about the heat and the humidity and the tourists, but they’re smiling as they do it, and still smiling when it all settles down in the evening.
Her cloak is sprawled out on the sand like a beach towel. They sit, and pick on the Magikarp, and talk just low enough to hear.
“We should start a business,” she says, with her mouth full. “Like a restaurant or something. Well-seasoned barbeque. It’d be a hit.”
“May,” he rolls his eyes, “we’d be bored out of our minds and you know it.”
May shrugs, swallows, and says she’d find a way to love him even if he woke up tomorrow and was cripplingly boring. He thanks her graciously for the world’s weirdest form of encouragement, and says he loves her, too.
✺✺✺
She loves him in the autumn, when the wind Elementals dance through her neck of the woods and the leaves that kick up behind them change colors. As the seasons change, he changes colors, too. He grows darker, cooler-toned. He becomes something that could blend in with the evergreens dotting the mountainside. She likes the way he looks when they go hiking — like he’s something cold-hardy, something wild, something always meant to be part of the forests she protects.
And it’s a bit selfish, but she likes the way he looks at her when they’re sat by the campfire, like she belongs in the woods just as much as any Dryad, like she’s something wild, too. It makes her feel proud to work, proud to keep her post, proud to grow in any conditions. It’s not always easy to keep growing uphill, against the wind and rain and soot, but they’ve both managed to do it so far. There’s no point in stopping any time soon.
She traces her fingers along the brown vines that stretch over his arms in the autumn, admires all the different colors she doesn’t get to see any other time of year. Wild winter roses bloom along the path of her hand.
“You’d be awful at playing poker,” she says, cheeky. “Alraunes have too many tells.”
“May,” he pouts, “that’s not fair. And at least I don’t laugh when I get a good hand, like you do.”
She laughs and promises she’ll love him even if he’s dogwater at gambling. In between kisses, he promises he’ll love her, too.
❄❄❄
She loves him in the winter, when the land gets cool and dry and the waves are cold on her back when she swims her way home. He sits on a kitchen stool and listens to her talk about all the trail encounters she’s had since they last talked. She crops his hair short, collects the trimmings, cleans them and peels them and soaks them in sugar. They chop them up in a comfortable quiet, and they make candies.
The cold front soothes his overactive plant growth, eases his pollen allergies. With his hair so closely cropped, he looks younger, brighter. For a moment, she can pretend they’re teenagers again, just starting to figure life out. It’s nice to leave all her responsibilities at the door, just for an afternoon. It’s a little therapeutic to take gardening shears to something tangible.
Wally finds little ways to keep her warm against the cold front. Her childhood kitchen fills with laughter. He grows spices for her, and Yuuki lights a fire under the kettle for them, and they toast over a hot cup of tea while the candies cool.
He takes their cups to put in the sink when they’re done gossipping and catching up. She pinches his cheeks when he makes the mistake of walking too closely past her, crinkles up her nose and coos, “look at your baaaby face.”
“ Maaa-aay,” he complains, “be nice.”
She says she loves him with any haircut, even when it makes him look boyish. He says he’d still rather look mature, but he loves her, too.
❀❀❀
She loves him most in the spring.
It’s not because of anything he does, or the way he looks this time of year – though it’s clear from his vibrancy and overgrowth that he thrives in the warm, damp weather – and it’s not that she likes him less any other time of year. But springtime is full of cultural festivals and gardening crews and birthday parties and family gatherings for dryads in Hoenn. Springtime is when he’s home for more than a few days every couple of months or so. Springtime is when they have enough time to relax.
The older May gets, the more she loves sitting around and relaxing, the more she craves the brief moments where she doesn’t have to worry about doing anything at all. Wally’s life is somehow even busier than hers, so he’s inclined to agree. They’re nestled in her treehouse Secret Base, watching the stars through the skylight between the leaves, and she rests her head in his lap like she’s done it a million times (she has.)
Mentally she corrects herself – it’s not that she loves him most in the spring, but that she gets to love him for the longest. Life is busy, most of the time. She’s okay with taking what she can get, and figuring out the rest as it comes with the changing seasons.
Wally tells her all the things he’s learned in his overseas studies. She listens to lengthy explanations on Infinity Energy and the Ultimate Weapon, on the ethics of Mega Evolution and the differences in philosophies between Hoenn and the rest of the world, on how Kalos is beautiful in the winter because it actually snows there. He tells her there’s a million and one alternate realities out there, and theirs is only one, in a massive spider web of possibilities. He tells her how the Draconids had it right the whole time. He tells her how other students find people like the two of them extraordinary, for the ease with which they use their Key Stones. He tells her he thinks she’s extraordinary, just for being his friend.
“Isn’t it amazing,” she says, as a pleasant smile brings out her dimples, “that you and me ended up on the same planet, in the same place, at the same time? I mean, of all the ways life could have gone, of all the different timelines and realities…”
“I guess so,” he says. “I mean, it is, for sure, the way it’s amazing that anything happens against infinite possibility. But I never thought about it like that. I never really tried to picture a different life on, like, an individual level. I just got excited thinking about what’s out there.”
“Do you think we know each other?” May asks. “In those other places, I mean.”
“I think so,” he answers. He looks down from the skylight to meet curious eyes. “It’s hard for me to think about what it’d be like if we didn’t.”
“I hope we’re still friends,” she says, “and that we’re real happy, wherever the hell we’re going. Maybe just as happy as now.”
They both look back up at the skylight. May takes a deep inhale and exhale, breathes in the fresh spring air. It feels like it’s traveled a long way to get there.
“Maybe I could’ve been this happy in another reality,” he says, after a thoughtful pause. “But I doubt it.”
May takes a long time to think on that. Then she says she’s decided she doesn’t really care about what’s going on in all those other timelines, because he’s her friend now, and she loves him in this one.
A single red zinnia blooms on the tip of his nose. He sneezes. When they’ve both stopped laughing, he says he loves her in this one, too.