(no subject)
Title: Going Home
Fandom: Pokemon Colosseum
Rating: T for Teen
Characters/Pairing: WesxRui
Summary: Rui's not quite sure what it means to be home. But she knows where she wants to be, and that's anough for her. Wes and Rui meet the parents. (Written for Pokeprompts.)
AN: Um. I feel a little stupid for admitting this is my forever OTP (does anyone even remember this game?) but it is and I've been looking for an excuse to write something like this for a while.
“I am really am sorry,” Rui says with a grimace as they step off the boat.
“Oh, come on,” Wes replies, grinning lightly, “I keep trying to tell you it’s not a problem.”
But Rui knows how to read Wes by now. He’s the sort of guy whose face always lies-he smiles no matter how he’s feeling. Wes shows his emotions in the way his shoulders tense, the way he runs his fingers up his arms and through his hair over and over again. Rui knows Wes, and she can tell that this is the farthest thing from fine to him. But she also knows that he’ll only feel worse if she calls him out, so she just gives him a little grin and a quick peck on the cheek.
“Come on then, silly!” Laughing, runs over to where their luggage is being unloaded.
It’s time to meet the parents.
-
Rui loves the way Slateport looks in spring. It’s around this time every year that the city starts preparing for the summer tourist rush, millions of overweight, sun-burnt people with cameras and flower-print shirts running all over the town, and right now it has a sort of incomplete feel, like a flower just waiting to bloom.
Wes, though, doesn’t seem to agree.
“What is with these people?” he murmurs as they walk down the street.
She giggles and gives him a light smack on the arm. “They just aren’t used to such weird clothes. I told you to pick something less conspicuous out.”
Personally, though, she thinks it’s more than just that. Everything about Wes, from his dark skin and white hair all the way down the Snag Machine he still keeps strapped to his arm, is just…different. Rui has grown so used to Orre, its people and styles and culture, that she’s forgotten what normal looks like. It’s a strange thing to realize.
“So,” Wes says suddenly, “Left here?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, that’s right.” Rui realizes with a start that she recognizes where she is. There’s the tree she broke her wrist falling out of, and the rock she used to play fort on. They’re only about fifteen minutes away from home.
Wes smiles weakly at her, his whole body radiating tension.
“Oh, come on,” she sighs, stepping close to him and linking their arms together, “I promise my parents aren’t that bad.”
Actually, she thinks nervously, they fully well might be when it comes to their beloved only daughter, but Wes doesn’t need to know that. They’re both nervous enough already.
“And if they don’t let you come back to Orre?” he asks her, golden eyes staring into her own.
“They can’t stop me,” she protests. “I am legally an adult, you know.”
That, at least, gets a little smirk out of him. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re just so mature.”
“Shut up,” she says, whacking him again.
They spend a few minutes playing around that way, pushing and shoving each other until Wes overbalances and falls into a puddle.
“Seriously?” he complains, looking down in disgust. “I guess there really is something to be said for perpetual draught.”
Rui knows it’s not very nice, but she can’t help but laugh as she helps him up. She stops laughing a moment later, though, when he pushes her into the mud.
-
By the time they make it to Rui’s house, it is almost sundown and they are both soaked through and giddy. Perhaps, Rui thinks hopefully, perhaps this won’t be so bad.
“Rui, honey,” a voice calls from the porch. “Is that you?”
Before Rui even fully realizes what she is doing, she has launched herself across the lawn, up the steps and into her mother’s arms.
“Mommy,” she sobs happily, “I missed you.”
“Oh, Rui,” says her mother, sounding rather bewildered. “I’m happy to see you too. Why are you all wet?”
Rui releases her mother sheepishly. “Sorry, I was just fooling around with...”
A moment later, her brain catches up to her and Rui realizes that she still hasn’t told her family about Wes.
Well, Mommy, you know how you sent me off to stay with Granny and Gramps for a summer? Well, I actually got kidnapped and then met this boy and we ended up busting a criminal ring together, but nobody died so that was alright. Anyway, now he’s my boyfriend and we’re here so I can tell you that I want to live in Orre forever instead of just for the summer.
Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
Instead, Rui just gestures weakly towards Wes, still standing awkwardly in the middle of their lawn.
“With Wes,” she finishes finally. “He’s a…friend,” both of them wince at her pause on the word friend, “Of mine that I met in Orre. Is it okay if he stays here for a bit?”
“Oh,” her mother says, dazedly looking out across the lawn. “Oh, my.”
For a moment, following her mother’s gaze, Rui realizes what Wes must really look like to an outsider. His eyes, bright gold and slit-pupilled. The long white tattoo that bisects his face. The thin silver scars that cover his body, only barely visible in the right light. The outfit, black leather with metal goggles. The strange machine that makes his left arm look more like metal than flesh.
This isn’t going to be pretty, Rui thinks as her bubble of hope bursts.
-
At first, Rui thinks her mom is going to start interrogating Wes right there on the front lawn, but she somehow manages to defuse the situation enough to get the poor guy inside the house with a cup of hot tea in his hands before the questions start coming.
“So,” her mother says, furiously scrubbing a dirty dish. “Where did you first meet my daughter, Wes?”
“Um,” Wes says awkwardly, staring down at the china mug in his hands like has no idea how it got there.
Rui jumps in. “So, Mom! Did you redecorate while I was gone? The living room looks so pretty.”
Her mother gives her a Look of the sort that really does deserve a capital letter. I know what you’re trying, her eyes seem to say, and I’m not falling for it.
Outwardly, though, her mother just grins and laughs. “Well, sweetie, I’m glad you’re so enthusiastic about this house! All I did was hang a new picture.”
She turns back to Wes, her smile so tight it looks painted on. “I’m sorry, honey. My daughter’s just so eager! I completely missed what you said.”
“Um, I didn’t…” Wes looks a little shell-shocked, and Rui can’t blame him. Even Rui has never seen her mother acting so fiercely protective.
She scared of him. She’s scared of losing me to him.
For some reason, this thought makes Rui want to run over and hug her mother, to tell her that everything’s going to be all right. She stays there, though, perched on the arm of the couch, as Wes recovers.
“I’m sorry,” he says, flashing a dazzling smile at her mother. “I didn’t say. I met her in Pyrite Town while I was there on some business. She was lost, so I offered to escort her to Agate Town, and well.” Wes ends his sentence with an awkward, endearing little shrug, and Rui wishes there was a way to sneak him a high five under the table. He’s good at this.
Mother catches Rui’s eye, looking for confirmation, and she takes the opportunity to jump into the conversation. (Like a relay race, some little part of her brain thinks giddily.)
“Yup! It’s true. I got… really, really lost. And then these guys…” Kidnapped me and left me tied up in a sack. “Offered me a ride but totally ditched me in Pyrite.”
“You took a ride from a couple of strangers?!”
Oh, Rui thinks. Right.
It’s been three months and already she’s forgotten what it’s like to be afraid of strangers in nice cars. She spent her summer tracking down vicious feral Pokémon, fighting off evil megalomaniacs and trying to outwit a corrupt organization. And somewhere along the line, that became her normal.
The idea leaves her shaking, because she’s only now realizing what she’s subconsciously known all along: Orre is her home now. It’s a cruel, desperate, fucked up kind of home, but she loves it all the same.
“Mother.” Rui rubs at her temples, suddenly feeling very old. “It’s late, and I’m sure Wes is tired. Let me show him the guest room and you and I can finish the dishes together.”
What she doesn’t say is, We need to talk. But her mom hears it all the same.
-
She gives Wes a quick peck on the cheek as she leads him into the guest room.
“If you think that’s going to distract me from this-“he motions around the room with one arm- “Then you’re sorely mistaken.”
Looking around the room, Rui has to agree with the poor guy. Pastel-colored Teddiursa dance across the bedspread and the walls are covered in cheap pictures of Pokémon looking cute.
“Ahaha. I’d forgotten just how hideous this room is.”
“Well, I know I’ll never be able to forget,” he grumbles. “Seriously, those things make our shadow teddiursa look harmless.”
Rui laughs and reaches up again, planting a little kiss on Wes’s mouth.
“Well,” she breathes into his ear, “Just close your eyes. Then you won’t even know they’re there.”
Wes laughs and leans down and lets his lips meet hers and his hand come to rest in her hair and she smiles into his kiss and-
“Rui!” calls a voice from downstairs and she pulls away, breathless.
“Coming!” she calls and bounds out of the room without a second glance, flustered and guilty.
-
About half the dishes are already done when Rui finally dashes into the kitchen, and it’s with an apologetic little murmur that she slides into place beside her mom. They work in a comfortable sort of silence for the next few minutes, speaking only to ask for the soap or a fresh towel.
“So,” her mom finally says in a deceptively light voice. “Will that Wes boy be staying for very long?”
Rui flinches. “No, Mom, he won’t.” Pause. Breathe in, breathe out. “Neither will I, actually.”
Her mom freezes. “What?”
“That…. That’s what I came here to tell you.” Rui completely focused on her hands now, because she knows if she looks her mom in the face then her voice will start to falter.
She knows what she wants. But it’s hard to say.
“I love Orre. I want to live there.”
“Rui.” Her mom’s voice has become soft, the same tone she used when Rui was seven sent a baseball flying through their neighbor’s window. Mommy is angry.
“I don’t think you realize what you’re saying. You have a college all lined up. A good college. You have a future, Rui, and you’re about to throw it all away for the sake of some boy!”
Rui’s head snaps up at the mention of Wes. It was silly, she knows, to hope that her mom hadn’t realized they were dating, but it doesn’t stop her from being startled.
“…No.” She’s staring her mom straight in the eye, now, and she’s terrified of what she sees there. Her mom is disappointed in her, unhappy with what she’s saying, and for Rui that stings like a knife.
“I-I mean, Wes is a part of it…” She wants to say, I love him, but she already sounds like a silly lovestruck little girl, so instead she continues, “I like him a lot. I think maybe it can work out between us. But I’m not doing this for him. You know me, Mom. You know I’m not the sort of person who would do that.”
Mom sighs, tension radiating from the set of her shoulders. “You’re father won’t be home until late tonight,” she says. “Got to bed. We can discuss this in the morning.”
“Mom…”
“Bed, Rui,” her mom snaps.
Rui wants to fight. Rui knows she can fight. She can feel the rush of a confrontation building up, just like every time she watched Wes battle, and she balls her fists around the plate. But this isn’t some lowlife with a shadow beast in tow. This is her mom, and Rui doesn’t want to say anything she might regret in the morning. Instead, she slowly trudges upstairs, feeling sick and worried and just like a little kid.
-
In the end, Rui doesn’t go to bed. Or, rather, she doesn’t go to her bed. Instead, she brushes her teeth and slips on her pajamas and then quietly tiptoes over to the guest room.
There’s a moment as she closes the door behind her that she wonders if Wes is even awake. But no, he’s an Orre boy, Rui reminds herself. He’d probably woken up the moment he heard her footsteps in the hallway.
Sure enough, she hears him whisper to her as she sits down on the edge of the bed.
“What’re you doing in here, baby? Forgot where your room is?”
“Shut up,” she whispers back, smacking the part of the bed she heard his voice come from.
Sure enough, she’s rewarded with a little, “Ow!” and she can’t help but smile. Wes can always cheer her up, whether he’s trying to or not.
She crawls towards the sound of his voice, feeling out the shape of his back and arms. His right arm feels strange and fragile without the snag machine wrapped around it, and she can’t resist the urge to trail her fingers up and down it a few times.
“So,” he murmurs, sounding rather bewildered. “Have I stepped into bad-porn land or something? Because you do realize we’re in your parent’s house right now.”
“Pervert!” she hisses in mock-horror, and he snickers at her. Rui supposes she’s lucky this bed is so squeaky, because otherwise they probably would have ended up having the pillow-fight of the century in that little room. As it is, they end up in a loose embrace, faces only inches away.
“I’ll leave soon,” Rui says into the dark. “Before my mom comes up to check on me. I just… It didn’t go well, and I wanted to be with you.”
“I thought as much,” he breathes back. “Are you… okay with that?”
“Yes!” she says, a little louder than she intended. She claps a hand over her mouth and quiets herself down before continuing. “Yes, I am. I know what I want. I just… I also don’t want to confront my parents. To fight them. And I don’t know how to do it.”
“Well,” Wes says, and Rui doesn’t need to see his smirk to know it’s there, “We can always wake up early and jump out the window.”
“Tempting,” she says with a laugh as she pulls the two of them closer.
Tomorrow… tomorrow’s going to suck. Rui knows that. But right now she’s got her best friend (her boyfriend) close enough to kiss. And for now, that’s more than good enough.
Rui leans in and closes the distance between them.
Fandom: Pokemon Colosseum
Rating: T for Teen
Characters/Pairing: WesxRui
Summary: Rui's not quite sure what it means to be home. But she knows where she wants to be, and that's anough for her. Wes and Rui meet the parents. (Written for Pokeprompts.)
AN: Um. I feel a little stupid for admitting this is my forever OTP (does anyone even remember this game?) but it is and I've been looking for an excuse to write something like this for a while.
“I am really am sorry,” Rui says with a grimace as they step off the boat.
“Oh, come on,” Wes replies, grinning lightly, “I keep trying to tell you it’s not a problem.”
But Rui knows how to read Wes by now. He’s the sort of guy whose face always lies-he smiles no matter how he’s feeling. Wes shows his emotions in the way his shoulders tense, the way he runs his fingers up his arms and through his hair over and over again. Rui knows Wes, and she can tell that this is the farthest thing from fine to him. But she also knows that he’ll only feel worse if she calls him out, so she just gives him a little grin and a quick peck on the cheek.
“Come on then, silly!” Laughing, runs over to where their luggage is being unloaded.
It’s time to meet the parents.
-
Rui loves the way Slateport looks in spring. It’s around this time every year that the city starts preparing for the summer tourist rush, millions of overweight, sun-burnt people with cameras and flower-print shirts running all over the town, and right now it has a sort of incomplete feel, like a flower just waiting to bloom.
Wes, though, doesn’t seem to agree.
“What is with these people?” he murmurs as they walk down the street.
She giggles and gives him a light smack on the arm. “They just aren’t used to such weird clothes. I told you to pick something less conspicuous out.”
Personally, though, she thinks it’s more than just that. Everything about Wes, from his dark skin and white hair all the way down the Snag Machine he still keeps strapped to his arm, is just…different. Rui has grown so used to Orre, its people and styles and culture, that she’s forgotten what normal looks like. It’s a strange thing to realize.
“So,” Wes says suddenly, “Left here?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, that’s right.” Rui realizes with a start that she recognizes where she is. There’s the tree she broke her wrist falling out of, and the rock she used to play fort on. They’re only about fifteen minutes away from home.
Wes smiles weakly at her, his whole body radiating tension.
“Oh, come on,” she sighs, stepping close to him and linking their arms together, “I promise my parents aren’t that bad.”
Actually, she thinks nervously, they fully well might be when it comes to their beloved only daughter, but Wes doesn’t need to know that. They’re both nervous enough already.
“And if they don’t let you come back to Orre?” he asks her, golden eyes staring into her own.
“They can’t stop me,” she protests. “I am legally an adult, you know.”
That, at least, gets a little smirk out of him. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re just so mature.”
“Shut up,” she says, whacking him again.
They spend a few minutes playing around that way, pushing and shoving each other until Wes overbalances and falls into a puddle.
“Seriously?” he complains, looking down in disgust. “I guess there really is something to be said for perpetual draught.”
Rui knows it’s not very nice, but she can’t help but laugh as she helps him up. She stops laughing a moment later, though, when he pushes her into the mud.
-
By the time they make it to Rui’s house, it is almost sundown and they are both soaked through and giddy. Perhaps, Rui thinks hopefully, perhaps this won’t be so bad.
“Rui, honey,” a voice calls from the porch. “Is that you?”
Before Rui even fully realizes what she is doing, she has launched herself across the lawn, up the steps and into her mother’s arms.
“Mommy,” she sobs happily, “I missed you.”
“Oh, Rui,” says her mother, sounding rather bewildered. “I’m happy to see you too. Why are you all wet?”
Rui releases her mother sheepishly. “Sorry, I was just fooling around with...”
A moment later, her brain catches up to her and Rui realizes that she still hasn’t told her family about Wes.
Well, Mommy, you know how you sent me off to stay with Granny and Gramps for a summer? Well, I actually got kidnapped and then met this boy and we ended up busting a criminal ring together, but nobody died so that was alright. Anyway, now he’s my boyfriend and we’re here so I can tell you that I want to live in Orre forever instead of just for the summer.
Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
Instead, Rui just gestures weakly towards Wes, still standing awkwardly in the middle of their lawn.
“With Wes,” she finishes finally. “He’s a…friend,” both of them wince at her pause on the word friend, “Of mine that I met in Orre. Is it okay if he stays here for a bit?”
“Oh,” her mother says, dazedly looking out across the lawn. “Oh, my.”
For a moment, following her mother’s gaze, Rui realizes what Wes must really look like to an outsider. His eyes, bright gold and slit-pupilled. The long white tattoo that bisects his face. The thin silver scars that cover his body, only barely visible in the right light. The outfit, black leather with metal goggles. The strange machine that makes his left arm look more like metal than flesh.
This isn’t going to be pretty, Rui thinks as her bubble of hope bursts.
-
At first, Rui thinks her mom is going to start interrogating Wes right there on the front lawn, but she somehow manages to defuse the situation enough to get the poor guy inside the house with a cup of hot tea in his hands before the questions start coming.
“So,” her mother says, furiously scrubbing a dirty dish. “Where did you first meet my daughter, Wes?”
“Um,” Wes says awkwardly, staring down at the china mug in his hands like has no idea how it got there.
Rui jumps in. “So, Mom! Did you redecorate while I was gone? The living room looks so pretty.”
Her mother gives her a Look of the sort that really does deserve a capital letter. I know what you’re trying, her eyes seem to say, and I’m not falling for it.
Outwardly, though, her mother just grins and laughs. “Well, sweetie, I’m glad you’re so enthusiastic about this house! All I did was hang a new picture.”
She turns back to Wes, her smile so tight it looks painted on. “I’m sorry, honey. My daughter’s just so eager! I completely missed what you said.”
“Um, I didn’t…” Wes looks a little shell-shocked, and Rui can’t blame him. Even Rui has never seen her mother acting so fiercely protective.
She scared of him. She’s scared of losing me to him.
For some reason, this thought makes Rui want to run over and hug her mother, to tell her that everything’s going to be all right. She stays there, though, perched on the arm of the couch, as Wes recovers.
“I’m sorry,” he says, flashing a dazzling smile at her mother. “I didn’t say. I met her in Pyrite Town while I was there on some business. She was lost, so I offered to escort her to Agate Town, and well.” Wes ends his sentence with an awkward, endearing little shrug, and Rui wishes there was a way to sneak him a high five under the table. He’s good at this.
Mother catches Rui’s eye, looking for confirmation, and she takes the opportunity to jump into the conversation. (Like a relay race, some little part of her brain thinks giddily.)
“Yup! It’s true. I got… really, really lost. And then these guys…” Kidnapped me and left me tied up in a sack. “Offered me a ride but totally ditched me in Pyrite.”
“You took a ride from a couple of strangers?!”
Oh, Rui thinks. Right.
It’s been three months and already she’s forgotten what it’s like to be afraid of strangers in nice cars. She spent her summer tracking down vicious feral Pokémon, fighting off evil megalomaniacs and trying to outwit a corrupt organization. And somewhere along the line, that became her normal.
The idea leaves her shaking, because she’s only now realizing what she’s subconsciously known all along: Orre is her home now. It’s a cruel, desperate, fucked up kind of home, but she loves it all the same.
“Mother.” Rui rubs at her temples, suddenly feeling very old. “It’s late, and I’m sure Wes is tired. Let me show him the guest room and you and I can finish the dishes together.”
What she doesn’t say is, We need to talk. But her mom hears it all the same.
-
She gives Wes a quick peck on the cheek as she leads him into the guest room.
“If you think that’s going to distract me from this-“he motions around the room with one arm- “Then you’re sorely mistaken.”
Looking around the room, Rui has to agree with the poor guy. Pastel-colored Teddiursa dance across the bedspread and the walls are covered in cheap pictures of Pokémon looking cute.
“Ahaha. I’d forgotten just how hideous this room is.”
“Well, I know I’ll never be able to forget,” he grumbles. “Seriously, those things make our shadow teddiursa look harmless.”
Rui laughs and reaches up again, planting a little kiss on Wes’s mouth.
“Well,” she breathes into his ear, “Just close your eyes. Then you won’t even know they’re there.”
Wes laughs and leans down and lets his lips meet hers and his hand come to rest in her hair and she smiles into his kiss and-
“Rui!” calls a voice from downstairs and she pulls away, breathless.
“Coming!” she calls and bounds out of the room without a second glance, flustered and guilty.
-
About half the dishes are already done when Rui finally dashes into the kitchen, and it’s with an apologetic little murmur that she slides into place beside her mom. They work in a comfortable sort of silence for the next few minutes, speaking only to ask for the soap or a fresh towel.
“So,” her mom finally says in a deceptively light voice. “Will that Wes boy be staying for very long?”
Rui flinches. “No, Mom, he won’t.” Pause. Breathe in, breathe out. “Neither will I, actually.”
Her mom freezes. “What?”
“That…. That’s what I came here to tell you.” Rui completely focused on her hands now, because she knows if she looks her mom in the face then her voice will start to falter.
She knows what she wants. But it’s hard to say.
“I love Orre. I want to live there.”
“Rui.” Her mom’s voice has become soft, the same tone she used when Rui was seven sent a baseball flying through their neighbor’s window. Mommy is angry.
“I don’t think you realize what you’re saying. You have a college all lined up. A good college. You have a future, Rui, and you’re about to throw it all away for the sake of some boy!”
Rui’s head snaps up at the mention of Wes. It was silly, she knows, to hope that her mom hadn’t realized they were dating, but it doesn’t stop her from being startled.
“…No.” She’s staring her mom straight in the eye, now, and she’s terrified of what she sees there. Her mom is disappointed in her, unhappy with what she’s saying, and for Rui that stings like a knife.
“I-I mean, Wes is a part of it…” She wants to say, I love him, but she already sounds like a silly lovestruck little girl, so instead she continues, “I like him a lot. I think maybe it can work out between us. But I’m not doing this for him. You know me, Mom. You know I’m not the sort of person who would do that.”
Mom sighs, tension radiating from the set of her shoulders. “You’re father won’t be home until late tonight,” she says. “Got to bed. We can discuss this in the morning.”
“Mom…”
“Bed, Rui,” her mom snaps.
Rui wants to fight. Rui knows she can fight. She can feel the rush of a confrontation building up, just like every time she watched Wes battle, and she balls her fists around the plate. But this isn’t some lowlife with a shadow beast in tow. This is her mom, and Rui doesn’t want to say anything she might regret in the morning. Instead, she slowly trudges upstairs, feeling sick and worried and just like a little kid.
-
In the end, Rui doesn’t go to bed. Or, rather, she doesn’t go to her bed. Instead, she brushes her teeth and slips on her pajamas and then quietly tiptoes over to the guest room.
There’s a moment as she closes the door behind her that she wonders if Wes is even awake. But no, he’s an Orre boy, Rui reminds herself. He’d probably woken up the moment he heard her footsteps in the hallway.
Sure enough, she hears him whisper to her as she sits down on the edge of the bed.
“What’re you doing in here, baby? Forgot where your room is?”
“Shut up,” she whispers back, smacking the part of the bed she heard his voice come from.
Sure enough, she’s rewarded with a little, “Ow!” and she can’t help but smile. Wes can always cheer her up, whether he’s trying to or not.
She crawls towards the sound of his voice, feeling out the shape of his back and arms. His right arm feels strange and fragile without the snag machine wrapped around it, and she can’t resist the urge to trail her fingers up and down it a few times.
“So,” he murmurs, sounding rather bewildered. “Have I stepped into bad-porn land or something? Because you do realize we’re in your parent’s house right now.”
“Pervert!” she hisses in mock-horror, and he snickers at her. Rui supposes she’s lucky this bed is so squeaky, because otherwise they probably would have ended up having the pillow-fight of the century in that little room. As it is, they end up in a loose embrace, faces only inches away.
“I’ll leave soon,” Rui says into the dark. “Before my mom comes up to check on me. I just… It didn’t go well, and I wanted to be with you.”
“I thought as much,” he breathes back. “Are you… okay with that?”
“Yes!” she says, a little louder than she intended. She claps a hand over her mouth and quiets herself down before continuing. “Yes, I am. I know what I want. I just… I also don’t want to confront my parents. To fight them. And I don’t know how to do it.”
“Well,” Wes says, and Rui doesn’t need to see his smirk to know it’s there, “We can always wake up early and jump out the window.”
“Tempting,” she says with a laugh as she pulls the two of them closer.
Tomorrow… tomorrow’s going to suck. Rui knows that. But right now she’s got her best friend (her boyfriend) close enough to kiss. And for now, that’s more than good enough.
Rui leans in and closes the distance between them.