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This is going to be perfect. Kieran’s confident that the stars will align in his favor for once in his miserable fourteen years of existence—he’s spent days on end plotting this plan out, biding his time until Valentine’s Day, falling immeasurably behind in a class or two in the meantime, but there are only so many hours in a day. He rereads a piece of scrap paper he’d ripped out of the dozens of notebooks he has lying around, tongue poking out in concentration.
Confession Methods
Write him a love letter.Too embarrassing to write and too easy to misunderstand.Ask his friends to wingman for me.Friends are too protective. May end up worse off than before.Catch a shiny Pokémon for him.Way too hard. Will probably not find one in time for Valentine’s Day.Call Uva Academy as a university official and transfer Florian here then confess.Tempting but unhinged.Take him on a picnic?That kaiju of his would completely destroy the romantic vibe.Trade him a Luvdisc?Too on the nose.- Trade him an Applin?
He has an Applin ready to trade, freshly caught in a Poké Ball that he had to pester Lacey into giving to him because he blew all his Pokédollars on vitamins again, but Florian is worth it. He’s always worth it.
When Kieran had been adrift in his own head, lost in a sea of tumultuous negative emotions, he couldn’t escape his desire to best Florian, his longing to make Florian feel a fraction of the all-consuming pain that swallowed him whole, his longing to knock him off his gold-encrusted pedestal just to see if Florian is as fallible as the rest of the human race. These days, he wants to be on that pedestal next to him, wants Florian to look at him like he’s something special too. Deep down, Kieran thinks that’s all he ever wanted.
“Decided to grace us with your presence today, hm, ex-Champ?” Drayton asks not a millisecond after Kieran collapses into a chair in the center of the club room, dropping his head on the table.
“Don’t start with me,” mumbles Kieran through the barrier of his folded arms.
“What was that? Could you speak up?” Drayton questions in that subtly mocking tone of voice Kieran has grown to despise. Drayton claims plausible deniability every time he voices a complaint to the other League Club members and all Drayton’s received so far are numerous slaps on the wrist to his knowledge. He made one mistake. One. Well, perhaps he made a lot more than that, but everyone else has stopped harping on him for the most part, and he’s beyond tired of the continued ridicule.
“Do I need to kick your ass again?” Kieran questions, lifting his head to ensure that Drayton heard him loud and clear. He throws his hands in the air in a lackluster imitation of surrender, that infuriating smirk never leaving his face; Kieran reconsiders if it’s worth a suspension to sic Hydrapple on him but ultimately, he pays him no further mind once the club doors slide open and Florian comes strolling in, radiant as ever. Great, now Kieran doesn’t have to roam around campus in search of him or annoy Carmine into letting him borrow her phone—the universe really is on his side today.
He watches Florian beeline toward the PC, bypassing everyone else in the room as he logs in and begins typing at a breakneck pace. Kieran wonders where he’d learned to use a computer like that—it takes him a minute to painstakingly type fifty words and even then, he constantly has to reread what he’s typing to make sure he hadn’t fat-fingered a few keys here and there. It was embarrassing to learn how to use a mouse too—he bets Florian was never the subject of an entire club room’s worth of jeers.
Kieran slowly makes his way over, not bothering to glance back at Drayton, who he assumes is spectating like some sort of vengeful hellspawn and is likely praying for his downfall. Florian is engrossed in a box display full of powerful-looking Pokémon, looking at a particularly cute one named Dachsbun and an approximation of its stats pinned to the right section of the screen—he waits a couple of seconds before swallowing his nerves down and tapping Florian on the shoulder, jumping the same time he does.
“Hey!” Kieran remembers to greet once Florian’s wild eyes land on him.
“Oh, hi Kieran. Man, you gave me a heart attack.”
“S-sorry,” he apologizes, fiddling with the stray portion of his bangs he’s thus far been unable to pin back with the rest of his hair. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“S’fine,” replies Florian. He briefly spins around to switch the computer off before leaning against the desk, gaze softening ever so slightly. “You need something?”
“Ah right—I do have a favor I wanna ask you… if you aren’t busy.” He thinks if his heart beats any faster, it’ll leap out of his ribcage like in a fable directly from an edgy poet Kieran can’t recall the name of. He hopes his red face isn’t betraying any horrible secrets right now.
“Not really,” says Florian. He smiles, stops leaning against the desk to step closer to him. “Why?”
“If it’s all right, do you wanna, um…” The knocking against his left thigh increases in velocity; he’s tempted to bite down on his fist but what if Florian thinks that weird habit is repulsive? What if Florian thinks he’s gross? “Do you wanna trade Pokémon with me?”
“Oh.” Florian blinks. Kieran tries not to dissolve into a tangle of nervous laughter the longer Florian looks at him, infuriatingly unreadable, and forcibly clenches his hand into a fist. He needs to work on curbing the many nervous tics he engages in, he reckons. “Yeah, okay, I’d love to.”
Inhale, exhale. This is going to be perfect. This will be perfect. Everything is—whatever, he’ll have time to overanalyze his critical decision-making skills later, Florian said yes. “Woo-hoo! I’ll trade my Applin! What about you, Florian?”
Florian’s eyes widen, flecks of gold spun in his brown irises, pink mouth seemingly dropping open of its own volition. It could be a trick of the light but Florian almost appears as though he’s blushing. Is he? For a gut-wrenching second, Kieran wonders if he came off too eager, too obvious in what he really means to say through the feigned nonchalance of a trade—his heart plummets when Florian glances away from him, face carefully blank in a way Kieran hasn’t seen since he first locked eyes with him upon stepping foot in Blueberry Academy.
“I—we…” Kieran starts to sputter, unsure of what to do other than attempt to throw them both a life raft in an awkward conversation he knows he should have never initiated. “We don’t have to—um—“
“Relax,” says Florian, which does the opposite of relaxing him. “Let’s trade.”
Oh Arceus. Kieran can’t pinpoint where it all went wrong because it happened faster than he could even bat an eyelid. His heart twists painfully in his chest as he clamps down hard on his bottom lip—he shouldn’t have done this. “It… doesn’t sound like you want to.”
“I do,” replies Florian and if Kieran were any other person who hasn’t spent days (weeks, months) ruminating on each little microexpression that crosses Florian’s facial features and every inflection of his voice like they compose a secret fifth section of his brain, he wouldn’t have picked up on the barely detectable fear to his tone. Unfortunately, he is not among the blissfully ignorant population. “Would you like my Cyclizar? He’s sort of like Miraidon’s mini-me.”
“I—“ Kieran’s voice wobbles. “But…” His death grip on Applin’s Poké Ball tightens. He wills his body to run but his feet remain glued to the floor, ears aflame in humiliation.
“Kieran,” says Florian, so full of pity, and Kieran suddenly hates himself, hates himself for ever thinking he could be Florian’s friend again, much less something more, hates himself for being unable to shake off the silly crush he’s harbored for far too long. He hates me. He hates me. I love him. “Hey, what’s going on? Talk to me.”
Florian lightly skirts his long fingers along his wrist; Kieran would normally be more flustered but he’s already tumbled too deep into the hole he’s dug himself into. He can hardly think beyond the blood rushing in his ears, the stark feeling of eyes on him, the all too familiar sensation that everyone is laughing with each other at him.
He thinks, in a manic moment, that maybe he should give this imaginary crowd something to laugh about one last time. It’s not like he hasn’t already been to rock bottom, become a resident there in all honesty. The Kieran he was prior to his prolonged mental breakdown would give up at this point, would’ve marched back to his dorm to lick his wounds and sulk for the next business year or two, but he’s not that person anymore. He doesn’t want to be that person anymore, at least. “… Do you know what day it is?” Kieran mutters like a death wish, hanging his head.
“Huh? What does that—“ Florian cuts himself off to gesture toward him as if to say, go on.
“The 14th.”
Florian sighs, one of those weary, sad ones that sounds as though he’s lived a million years in the span of a lifetime. It always makes Kieran wonder just what exactly he’s experienced, who he was before he ever met Kieran, what the imperceptible cracks in his façade are. “It is.”
“Uh huh,” says Kieran. He darts his eyes to the door, sparing a cursory glance around the room before tucking Applin’s Poké Ball into his jacket pocket. The entire room is empty aside from Crispin humming faintly on a couch near a corner of the room, a pair of headphones jammed atop his head as he marks up a textbook. Huh. He could’ve sworn that there was an entire crowd in here, leering at him and waiting for his inevitable next mistake.
“I feel like I’m reading too much into this,” announces Florian as he wrings his hands together. For once, he seems as fragile as Kieran often feels; his hollow chest caves further. Arceus knows how often he ends up this way. “Like… are we on the same page? At all?”
“Are we?” Kieran asks mostly because he has no other answer for him. What page should he be on? He swallows that last pathetic tendril of hope that’s been snaking up the back of his throat down as Florian draws his eyebrows together.
“You’re trying to trade me a-an Applin. On Valentine’s Day,” summarizes Florian, letting out another melancholic sigh. “And this whole conversation is driving me crazy because I want to kiss you but I don’t—“
“You what?” Kieran cuts in. Florian tangles a hand in his brown mop of hair. It always looks so soft to the touch, shiny as a Tera Pokémon under the dim lighting Florian’s decided to deck the room out in. I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you loops endlessly in his mind.
“I want to kiss you. And you trying to trade me an Applin today of all—“
Kieran perks up, the cloud of anxiety and despair that’s been gnawing at him for the past ten minutes dissipating behind the whites of his teeth. “You what?”
“I want to kiss… hey, wait—“ Florian squints at him, folding his arms over his chest. “You take me for a fool.”
“Just needed a li’l confirmation.”
“Unfair,” says Florian, grinning, before he’s encroaching his space like he belongs there. He does, Kieran thinks, deliriously pressing his shoulder against his and nearly knocking their heads together.
“What’s unfair is you lettin’ me think you didn’t like me an’ I was like, aw man, I messed up, of course you don’t think about me like that, or ever, an’—“
“No, I was trying not to freak out on you—I just thought you wouldn’t know what giving an Applin to someone can mean considering you aren’t… well, uh—on Valentine’s Day too…”
Florian would not know the half of it but Kieran laughs anyway, chokes on a stuttered breath when Florian leaves his sentence unfinished to duck down and leave a lingering peck on his cheek, then another; he asks if that was okay as if he hasn’t already left an indelible mark on Kieran.
His hair is as soft as Kieran imagined it would be. “Are we ever gonna complete the trade?” Kieran queries, then kisses him, or tries to because his nose collides a tad too harshly with Florian’s and the angle is off by many degrees; the exhale of breath against his lips ignites a small flame in his chest, a different brand of chasmic yearning. This feeling, he almost wishes would envelop him whole. Florian huffs a semblance of a laugh, winding his arms around his waist; his heartbeat is a steady march in his chest, stable unlike anything else in Kieran’s life.
He takes a breath through his nostrils, probably too loudly, wondering is this too much? But Florian is secure against him, kissing him like the world is ending soon and it’s his last chance to do so, unknowingly stoking the flames. All Kieran can do is clutch onto the lapels of Florian’s jacket, try in some way to meld with him or at least wordlessly communicate that this is how he’d prefer to carry out the rest of Florian’s trip.
“Wowzers,” rasps Kieran once he pauses to catch a breath, growing lightheaded. He notes, with an immense amount of satisfaction, that he’s added another cowlick to Florian’s bedraggled hair, and his lips are red and puffy and Kieran wouldn’t mind actually—
“Heh—wowzers.” Florian snorts, diving back in, effectively cutting his erratic train of thought off. Kieran privately thinks he wouldn’t mind Florian stealing his words like this for the rest of his life, head abuzz with exhilarating confusion and a hunger he had no idea existed within him. He didn’t know Florian wore vanilla chapstick—it would explain why he tastes like late summer nights, wouldn’t explain why Kieran can’t get enough, although he supposes the latter statement is self-explanatory. It’s Florian he’s kissing—the guy could hold the title of most chapped lips on the planet and Kieran would still be at the front of the line, desperately waving his hands around for a fleeting chance, shouting please, please just look at me.
“How’d you find out about the Applin tradition anyway?” Florian questions one quiet evening, temporarily drawing Kieran away from the pasta dish he doesn’t want to risk burning. He should’ve enlisted Crispin for assistance but Crispin and dorm kitchens aren’t the greatest of combos, as Lacey’s destroyed kitchen in the aftermath of an experimental chili can attest to. “I wanted to ask that day but I forgot until now.”
“Nemona told me you moved from Galar back when you guys came to Kitakami and uh… I dunno. I didn’t like any of the other confession methods I thought up.” He stirs a wooden spoon around, cursing under his breath when salt water froths threateningly against the rim, one more stir away from spilling over.
How is he supposed to prove his worth as a good boyfriend if he can’t cook the most basic of dishes? Jeez…
“Other confession methods?” Florian asks teasingly. “Aw, mi cielo, you’re too sweet.”
Kieran despises that a nickname he can’t comprehend sparks a bubble of warmth in his sternum—he called Florian my favorite one time in a vain attempt to be smooth, and has spent practically every minute since then tampering down the barrage of increasingly cheesy nicknames Florian loves to pelt at him. He peeks behind the barrier of his raised hands to find Florian staring at him, wearing a fond little smile, like Kieran has single-handedly hung the moon and stars in the sky. He grins brightly back, then panics when the water finally bubbles over, splattering on his stovetop with a few hisses. Florian immediately loses himself in a steady stream of cachinnation.
“Stop laughin’ at me,” he whines, mopping the mess up with a paper towel and unwittingly plastering the corner of it to the rim of a burner—for a moment, he considers the merits of taking Florian to the cafeteria instead for yet another round of Academy fries and too many soda cans split between them, but he’s determined to cook something edible. Perhaps not this sad version of bolognese but still.
“Do you,” Florian giggles breathlessly, “need some help over there?”
“What—no, the whole point is that you sit there an’ look pretty an’ I do somethin’ nice for you.”
“Oh,” says Florian, redder than his Applin. “Well—okay.”
In the end, Kieran scorches the absolute hell out of his poorly diced onions, not to mention that he mixed sugar up with salt again—maybe Crispin is onto something with the meticulous collection of jarred and labeled spices he keeps on his shelves. It has to be a better system than Kieran’s current Russian roulette-esque system. Florian merely laughs, reassures him that not everyone can be a whiz in the kitchen, and offers to place an order for delivery.
He’s a grounding presence, Kieran is quickly coming to realize, not just the star-studded unreachable champion he built Florian up to be in his head, and it only makes him fall further. There isn’t an end in sight, not that Kieran ever wants there to be one. As far as he’s concerned, he would love to never stop starting with Florian; he dreads to think about anyone else ever gaining the privilege of seeing him like this.
No one ever will though as long as Kieran can help it.