Remnants - Maxie/May

[no_youwouldnt]

Title: Remnants
Rating: R (sexual acts in the form of masturbation/fantasizing)
Word Count: 4795
Pairing: Maxie/May
Summary: All these years later, May still can't tell whether her ability to have answers run into her is a blessing or a curse.


Sometimes May still thinks about what happened.

She's never had recurring nightmares, as some might have expected her to. The conflict between Groudon and Kyogre has become a part of her now, something that she had seen once and doesn't need to relive; Rayquaza had done what had been hoped for, and there had been enough of a miracle for her to feel that maybe, maybe everything would be okay.

When she thinks about it now, it's more to wonder about what she hadn't seen, and those she hasn't seen since; her thoughts are given to meteorites and submarines, to the land and sea, to orbs glimmering brightly in masculine hands and the fact that she hasn't seen the two men that had held them since Mt. Pyre.

She isn't sure she wants to see them again, and somehow she doesn't think they're causing any more trouble; all the same, she wonders how they are. She doesn't believe they'll have gotten any gentler; in her mind, Archie remains overconfident in just about everything he does, and Maxie's words are still sharp, regardless of what he's saying. Perhaps they put aside their differences; it's more likely that they began bickering within twenty-four hours of leaving the orbs back where they belonged.

May is usually pretty indifferent to it all; it's all speculation, anyway. It's just that sometimes she finds herself wondering where they'd gone, and what they had done when they got there.

The rain falls heavy in Sootopolis, when it falls at all; May likes to tip her head back and let it run over her face, soaking her hair and sopping down into her collar.

Sometimes she hears people talk, on days when it doesn't seem like it's ever going to stop and the rain explodes against the pavement in sheets of thick, fat droplets, blown sideways by the wind - stories of Groudon and Kyogre and the battle that transpired here, told to slack-jawed children that are both enraptured and disbelieving.

It is, after all, just a story.

It's been a while since she's made her way through Jagged Pass; the Team Magma hideout, much to her surprise, is still there. She triggers the opening by accident, and after a moment of staring in strange, dulled surprise, she finds herself inside.

The drills are, of course, long dead, with no one around to operate them; when she thinks about it, she supposes that there's no need to move them. They had found what they were looking for, and lost what they had found; given that Maxie had seemed fine with destroying this place, it didn't seem like there was any desire to keep the things in the first place.

Morbid curiosity drives her to want to see the Team Aqua hideout as well, though when she gets there, she isn't surprised that the state of it mirrors its abandoned Magma counterpart - dead machines that most sane people wouldn't want to touch, panels in the floor that lead nowhere, and the most notable difference about the place is that May finds that she can actually read the blueprints now where they lie, still scattered haphazardly across the tables.

She wakes up startled that night, having dreamt about that cavern on the ocean bed for the first time in weeks; she curls up again on her side, silently cursing the fact that the dream always ends before she can even begin to find Rayquaza - leaving her standing shivering in the rain in front of the Sootopolis gym, Archie and Maxie in an obvious panic next to her.

All these years after the debacle with Team Aqua and Team Magma, May still isn't sure whether her apparent ability to have answers run into her is a blessing or a curse.

The initial contact is quick, something that should have been forgettable. He's in a hurry and she's staring at her shoes, blinking, trying to get the sleep out of her eyes due to the lack of it the night before; the cable car has just arrived, prepping for turnaround before going back down - he's getting off, she's getting on, and if she hadn't looked up when she bumped into him she might have missed him entirely.

He's dressed differently now, though enough of it remains the same - his coat is still unseasonably long, cutting off at the knee, though it's entirely black and lacking any sort of emblem or other defining mark; she finds herself nearly getting a faceful of it, and she backs up quickly and looks up to apologize. The words abruptly die in her throat, culled by the sight of shoulder-length red hair, stark against pale features that are so familiar that she can't stop staring.

She thinks he says something, but she doesn't hear it; her mind is elsewhere, on the feeling of his jacket beneath her palms where she's braced herself and an odd, burnt scent coming off of him, and of all the thoughts and feelings that run through her mind at the sight of him, the most inexplicable is relief. In the end, it's what she ends up acting on; she surges forward, her arms locking around his waist. She can feel him startle, his spine going rigid beneath her hands, and she doesn't embrace him for long; she can tell by the odd look on his face when she pulls away that she's embarrassed him.

"I suppose it's good to see you too, then," he says, not exactly looking at her, and she can tell by his tone that she was right in her assumption - he really isn't any gentler.

"It's been so long," she replies, stepping back enough to give him some space; he offers her a quiet hmph in response as he shifts to stand slightly hipshot, the fingers of his left hand burying themselves in the fabric of his coat.

"It has," he says eventually, though he seems distracted; his gaze is sharp and focused on her again, as if he's trying to work out whether he likes what he sees.

She continues anyway. "I've been thinking about you lately...and, well. Here you are."

That gets his attention. "Have you really...?"

"Yeah." She shrugs; the gesture is casual. "Maybe we could talk sometime. Meet up for drinks."

The look on his face makes her smile; clearly, the idea of her being old enough to ask him to have a drink with her isn't one he's entertained.

"Maybe tomorrow," she suggests, her shoulders rising in another shrug.

"That's fine," he says, his voice so brisk that it almost makes up for how awkward this seems to make him feel. "There's a place in Slateport, if it's - "

"It's still there," she finishes.

He nods, the gesture equally brisk; she lets him leave after that. She stares at her shoes on the way down the mountain, determinedly not thinking about exactly what she's just done and trying to remember if he's always carried that strange, burnt scent to him.

When she washes her hair the next evening, preparing to go out, May can't help but hope that he doesn't show up.

He's waiting for her when she arrives; neither of them really seem to know why they're there.

The casual black coat from before has been replaced with familiar red-and-black; at the same time, she can't help but notice that the emblem over the left side of his chest is no longer present. She isn't sure whether he had the original coat modified, or if he just thinks that particular sort of odd asymmetrical patterning is stylish somehow; given that the outfit she has on now implies that her style hasn't changed very much, either, she supposes they're even. She wonders if, unconsciously, they did it on purpose; years have gone by, and yet here they are - completely different people and still, inexplicably, the same.

They take a table in the back, the sort that begs for quiet discussion in low voices; though he keeps his distance, he sits next to her, not across, making her turn her head to study him when they order their drinks.

It's been nearly ten years since she's seen him last; he hasn't changed much. The fine lines marking his features are deeper, a bit more obvious, and the skin across the back of his hands is oddly blanched when he moves; at the same time, he remains well-kept and his posture is as it always was, and his hair is still that same vibrant red that she remembers. If anything, he doesn't look as old as she would have thought he might; she can't say whether this is due to good aging on his part, or growing-up on hers.

Both, maybe.

She expects him to order something acridly strong, the sort of thing that tends to make her turn her nose up, and she's surprised when he asks for something almost repulsively sweet; at the same time, it's far from a weak drink, the sort of thing that makes you underestimate it until it knocks you on your back, and her order is ridiculously light in comparison. He smirks at her when she places her request, and she makes a face at him; both of them seem to realize at the same time that neither of them are sure when this became something that was acceptable for them to be doing at all, and she averts her gaze so quickly that she can't be sure if he looks away or not.

"What is it that you wanted to discuss?" he asks her after a long moment passes; his words are brisk, businesslike at best, as though he might have something better to do at worst.

She looks up at him then, and does her best to grin at him, the expression cheeky. "Maybe I just wanted to make sure you haven't been causing any more trouble," she says, even if her tone implies that she doesn't think he has.

"You would like to press me about that," he says, even if his tone implies that he knows.

His company isn't the sort that one would call pleasant; at the same time, he seems perfectly aware of how unpleasant he is, and somehow that makes the entire experience okay. He still takes amusement from inappropriate things, even without any sort of drink in him, and his laugh is still unabashedly evil-sounding; his manner is sharp but accidental, trending towards leaning in conspiratorially to tell her things that are perfectly common knowledge, and talking too much only to tell her in the end that almost everything he'd just said was completely irrelevant.

She averts her eyes a bit after they receive their drinks, watching the fingertips of his left hand tracing counterclockwise circles around the rim of the glass. The drink he's ordered is an acidic-looking orange color, thick with sweetness and the sharp scent of fruit and alcohol, and he seems content to take it slow for now; hers is disappearing a bit more quickly, the clear bubbles breaking gently against her upper lip.

They make small talk until their first drink is gone; she has the common sense to let him talk about nothing until then, and it's well only after he decides to move on from that orange concoction and has started in on shots that she asks about Archie.

"Ah, Archie..." he says, and she can tell from his voice alone that they've been fighting; at the same time, he's clearly not drunk enough to be irrational about it. "No, he isn't here."

"That's okay," she says, though she isn't sure why. She can't maintain eye contact for much longer after that; though his voice wasn't exactly angry, the look in his eyes is dark, his expression hard.

In that moment, for the first time since she was a child, she fears him.

Most of the evening, however, passes without further incident - the exception comes in the form of one single moment, immediately before they leave. She's stopped drinking by then, but is at that point where trivial things are still very, very funny; his words are slurring softly, but he has a surprisingly good hold on himself considering how much he's imbibed. It occurs to her, hazily, that it's because he's experienced; he isn't looking anywhere near as tired as she feels.

She reaches out to get his attention, to thank him for being there, to tell him that she should go, and when her hand shoots out it connects with his body in a spot that's lower than she had intended; she freezes, her fingers resting on the understated slope of his hip, and she would have pulled away immediately and apologized were it not for the odd way his body twitches beneath her touch and the strange, soft noise that leaves his throat at the contact.

A long moment passes. He breathes in deeply. May suffocates.

She can't make herself meet his gaze; the flush across her features is deepening, no longer due solely to the alcohol, and in one quick motion she pulls her hand away and stands. Though she doesn't even hear the words as she says them, she apologizes - once, twice, profusely; he doesn't respond right away, though she can feel him staring, and she fumbles frantically for her case.

She throws money down onto the table, more than enough for her part of the tab, and leaves before he can speak.

She doesn't dream about him for several days, though she doesn't question why; perhaps seeing him was enough.

The errand she's on the next week is a trivial one, when all things are said and done; it's something that would be just as easily done by someone else, but May is convenient and in the right place at the wrong time, and in the end she's carrying a package with her through Jagged Pass when the rain starts.

This time she remembers that she has that emblem on her person; she slips into the Team Magma hideout and is both shocked and completely unsurprised to see that she isn't the only one there.

It's obvious that he'd been caught up in the rain too - his coat is saturated, sagging heavily where it's draped over his arm; the simple black shirt he was wearing beneath it is damp, and though it's been drying quickly due to the heat from Mt. Chimney, the back of his hair is still sticking wetly to the nape of his neck in a few spots. Even so, somewhere in the back of her mind she had known that he would return to his former base, with or without the rain; for now, he hasn't noticed her yet. He's standing near some of the drills, wiping some of the ash and soot from the smooth metal surfaces and studying them with such an intense expression on his face that it feels like she's interrupting, intruding on him somehow.

"We were close, weren't we."

It isn't a question, and May jumps at the sudden sound of his voice. "Yeah," she says, hesitant, and she flushes slightly when she notices that he seems equally startled; clearly, he had been speaking to himself, not to her, though he doesn't hesitate nearly as long as she does before recovering.

He smirks at her, though the expression is vague. "You would know."

She nods, speechless.

He flops the coat down across an outcropping nearby, freeing up both hands. One of his palms is dark from the soot he was wiping from the drills; he brushes it off against the outside of his thigh, in a spot that's definitely high enough to be covered by the coat once he puts it back on. All the while he moves toward her, closing some of the distance between them, though he stops well before he reaches her.

"I'm sorry," she says, pausing for a moment before she clarifies. "For bothering you."

"The weather is terrible," he replies as though that explains everything, and it does.

A few moments later she's joined his jacket on that outcropping, bracing her hands against it and jumping up backwards to sit at eye-level with him, her knees pressed tightly together and her hands resting on her thighs, fingers linked loosely around each other; he's in the middle of turning to study those drills again when she speaks.

"I don't remember really asking how you've been," she says; when he doesn't look at her, she continues. "I guess I've been afraid to know."

"I've been fine, May," he replies, turning around to face her again, and she's surprised that he remembers her name. "Really, I see no reason not to be."

"I know," she says, studying her hands. "You were just in a kind of bad place, last time I saw you."

"Of course I was," he says, surprising bluntness in his tone; when she glances up, he's looking at her oddly. "But you were a child then; I suppose that I shouldn't expect you to have known why."

"I..." The words die in her throat; she can't seem to make herself say it. I understand now.

He stares at her for a moment, one of his eyebrows arching slightly; she picks a different thing to say.

"Do you ever still think about it?"

He actually has to consider for a moment before answering; she waits in silence. "As much as anyone thinks about mistakes from their past, I suppose," he says eventually. "Some days more than others, but in the end? I don't dwell on it."

She nods at that, returning her attention to her hands; she doesn't expect him to start talking again, and her gaze snaps up again when he does.

"I admit that once in a while I wondered what had become of you." There's no sense of fondness in his tone; his voice remains oddly clinical when he says it. "After all, you were merely a child then, and already accomplishing things that adults could not. Imagine what you would be capable of once you were a grown woman! To be blunt, I would have thought that you would have moved on by now - that you would have left Hoenn, gone to see the rest of the world, perhaps. And yet here you are."

And when he falls silent, she realizes that she's blushing.

"I never thanked you properly," she says. "For coming back and helping with Archie...and for not leaving me behind in the cavern."

"We were in the middle of a crisis," he says. "I wasn't expecting any displays of gratitude - if anything, it would have been more surprising had you thought to do it."

"We're not in the middle of a crisis now." She reaches up, flicking some of her hair away from her face; it's drying steadily from the warmth of the cave. "So, thank you."

"Well," he says, his tone implying that, despite the leadup, he still doesn't know what to do with it. "You're welcome, I suppose."

She smiles. "It's no problem." She reaches behind her body then, her hand seeking out the pack at her hip and feeling around until she finds what she was looking for; she holds the Magma emblem flat against her palm, reaching out, offering it to him. "Did you want this back?"

He steps closer to her, a vague sense of recognition in his eyes; after a brief moment he rests his fingertips on it, moving to take it from her.

And then, inexplicably, he changes his mind.

"Keep it," he says, shaking his head; he shifts his hand's position against hers, curling her fingers inward around the emblem while simultaneously pushing it away. "After all, why would I have any need for it?"

"...I guess you're right," she says, breathing in deeply at the feeling of contact. To her surprise, he allows his hand to linger; his fingers are cold, but she doesn't pull away.

"It appears to have stopped," he says, glancing toward the door; even before she looks, she realizes that she can no longer hear the heavy rain slapping against the rocks outside.

She nods in response to his words; despite the mutual acknowledgement, neither of them move. She's almost painfully aware of him, of how close he is and the way the shadows of the cave play off of his face, how cold his hand is where it's closed around hers and how much more obvious his breathing is with his coat off and nothing but that simple black shirt covering his chest. He breathes deeply, as though getting as much oxygen into his system as possible before exhaling; he's spent so much time around live volcanic activity that she realizes that's probably exactly what he's doing, now that he's so close to the relatively clear air from outside.

"If you don't think about it often," she says, pulling her hand away gently, "then why did you come back?"

Her tone isn't accusatory, but just the same, he's more than willing to allow her to pull away.

"Perhaps," he replies, and the coldness of his hands is matched by the ice in his eyes, "I just wanted to see what was left."

The errand she has to run is suddenly a very convenient reason for her to leave; she excuses herself and he lets her go, though she nearly collides with him when she slides off of the ledge she had been sitting on.

She shouldn't find herself so curious as to what would have happened if she had touched him on the way out. How many points of contact he would have allowed her to establish.

She doesn't remember the dream she has; all she knows is that she wakes up panting and flushed, her body feeling too tight for her to lie still. She writhes, a soft moan leaving her body involuntarily as her thighs touch, her legs grinding together before she slips her hand beneath the elastic of those boy-shorts she wears to bed on hot nights like this. She keeps her fingers on the outside of her underwear, not beneath; the friction helps, and it makes it easier to pretend that it's someone else's hands instead of her own.

She arches her back slightly as her hand starts to move, drawing her lower lip into her mouth to prevent another whine from escaping her; she closes her eyes, shifting her hips upward and pushing into her own touch, driving the friction deeper and over that sensitive spot that makes the muscles in her thighs tighten and her head tip back, grinding her hair against the pillow.

As she does it again, keeping her eyes closed, in her mind her touch is no longer her own; her hands have been pulled aside and someone else has taken over for her, pale skin contrasting sharply with asymmetrical red and black, and she thrusts her hips into his touch so roughly that it'll embarrass her in the morning.

She can see him kneeling on the bed, leaning over her as she writhes beneath him, and she wants to reach out; she wants to touch his face, run her fingers through that startlingly red hair of his, to lock her leg around his waist and pull him down onto her, but she's well beyond the ability to move or speak or do anything besides allow her body to tense uncontrollably and quite simply want more.

And then there's a hand at her chest, stroking, tweaking and tugging softly at the skin, and she doesn't feel like she can for much longer.

Maxie...

She can't be sure whether she said it out loud or whether she thought it; if it was spoken, it was whispered - it's not a name that's cried out in abandon, begging to be screamed out loud - but she definitely vocalizes it the second time, her voice choked off and breathless.

"Maxie, Maxie, I..."

Her words die in a sharp, shuddering gasp, her body tightening so abruptly that she can't move, and even after the climax ends she finds that she can't do much outside of flop limply back onto the mattress.

She doesn't know how long she lies there until the full force of what she's just done hits her; though physically she doesn't want to move and it would normally have been something she dismissed as nothing but a fantasy, she forces herself out of bed to shower and change her clothes, feeling too humiliated to leave it until morning.

Though she tries to wait until she has a reason to be in that area, May can't leave their next meeting up to chance.

The former Magma hideout is the only place she knows of that he might possibly be; she imagines that's probably where he was going when he was exiting the cable car the first time she saw him, she's seen him there on his own, and in the end she just isn't sure where else to look. And yet he isn't there when she arrives; she pushes herself up to sit on that outcropping and wait, sitting with her knees pressed firmly together, trying not to look as awkward as she feels.

He enters eventually, as she'd thought he might, and the look he shoots her sends a sharp jolt down her spine; for one crazy, stupid moment, she's afraid that he knows.

And then he relaxes, and she relaxes, and despite the mutual relief he looks very, very unimpressed.

"Did you want something?" he says, none of the usual acidity gone from his tone; she wonders if he regrets allowing her to keep the emblem.

"Just to talk," she says, trying not to sound sheepish.

"Go ahead."

She hesitates for a moment, taking in a deep breath. "You aren't going to stay, are you?"

"No." The answer is so blunt it stings.

"I need to give you something before you go."

He looks skeptical. "That isn't - "

"Please," she says, a bit more desperately than she meant. "I won't ask to see you again in person after this, if you don't want to. Just please, let me."

He pauses, seeming to consider; the skepticism still hasn't left his eyes, but he approaches her regardless. If he's wary, it isn't obvious in his motions; he closes the distance between them in his usual brisk manner.

She shifts forward on the outcropping, moving closer to him without touching, and as soon as she's settled her hand moves to her bag. He looks at her oddly when she pauses like that, odder still when a high-pitched, mechanical beeping noise goes off.

"We don't have to talk much, or at all if you don't want to," she says, sliding the PokéNav out of the pocket of her bag. "But now that we're registered - I just want you to please consider calling before you leave, or whenever you come back. You don't have to promise to do it...just say you'll consider."

"May..."

"Maxie." The sudden usage of his name seems to strike him oddly; she tries to continue despite the vaguely startled look he's giving her. "Just do this for me. Please."

He hesitates for what feels like an eternity; she can't tell if she's breathing anymore.

"I'll call."

And even though at first she doesn't believe him, the thought is quickly replaced with the knowledge that the distance between them is inexplicably gone; she thinks he's moved forward, but it's hard for her to tell because suddenly there's pressure and warmth and the fabric of his jacket beneath her splayed fingers and those impossibly cold hands on her face. "Forgive me for this," he says, though the statement is rushed; she barely has time to nod mutely before his hand has slipped around behind her neck and he's kissing her.

She can't be sure how long they stay like that; she knows that she startles and for a long time she can't move, and it's only when he begins to pull away that she seems to come back into herself, pushing herself forward into him and burying her hands in his hair.

It ends too quickly, and she can tell that they both know it; she can also tell that he has no intention of kissing her again. She contents herself with bending forward, resting her forehead against his shoulder as she slides her hands out of his hair, slipping downward to hold onto his upper arms.

"I'll be sure to call," he says again; even though she can feel the light rising and falling of his chest, his voice is breathless.

This time, she believes him.