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The first time he did it Juliana was knocked for a loop. Literally! One second she was just sitting there, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine and the scent of grass and wildflowers. And then everything was upside down. Grass tickled the backs of her arms. The sky was wide and endless in front of her eyes. And Arven…
Time slowed down to nothing as Arven had entered her field of view. The light of the descending sun had caught his long (long, infuriatingly long!) eyelashes, making them almost glow, and Juliana could see a few flower petals caught in that fluffy, cream-n-coffee-coloured mane of hair. And as he looked down at her, it slowly dawned on Juliana that her arms were currently pinned in place by his big hands.
And he was looking down at her.
And he was on top of her.
And he leaned down– and everything smelled like grass and warm bread–
And the grin that split his face practically rivaled Mabosstiff’s–
"Gotcha!"
And the twin weights holding her arms in place vanished. Juliana was left staring at the red sky. Arven’s laughter was in her right ear. When she crooked her head, she could see him lying on his back, holding his sides as he chuckled.
"Geez, little buddy!" He grinned at her. "You gotta be more alert!"
Juliana had stared back at him, but eventually she had laughed. It might have sounded slightly hysterical, but she had managed to laugh. What else could she do?
Well, what she did was just attribute it to a flight of fancy from Arven. Just… a moment of overwhelming whimsy, she guessed.
Except then it happened again. While hanging out after a nice picnic together, Arven had… pounced on her, again. "Gotcha!" And then just as quickly gotten off her, again. He laughed and teased her for not having her guard up, just like the last time. And then, just as quickly, he moved on to some other topic, as if this sort of thing was so normal it didn’t require any fanfare, acknowledgement, or explanation.
Okay. Fine.
Then it happened again.
And again.
And… again.
And Juliana was sort of beginning to freak out??? What in the world was she supposed to take from this? A weird joke? An attempt to get her to learn self-defense? A Paldean custom she had never heard of?
…she wouldn’t even entertain the idea that he was doing it to scare her or intimidate her.
No. Arven wouldn’t do that.
Okay, so what WOULD Arven do?
Apparently, Arven would just suddenly… stop.
He stopped those weird… sneak attacks, or whatever they were. And he didn’t stop talking to her after class, or hanging out with her and Penny and Nemona, but… but he stopped inviting her to spend time with him alone. No more picnics. No more late afternoons spent on the hills on the outskirts of Mesagoza, or enjoying Nacli Salt Ice Cream cones together on a bench. Nothing.
It took two and a half weeks for Juliana to snap.
Finally, one night just half an hour before lights out, she grabbed her Rotom Phone and texted him, asking if he wanted to have a picnic after class tomorrow. She watched those three little dots blink for what felt like years. And eventually, she had drifted off. But when she woke up, she found an answer waiting for her.
And so here they were.
In many ways it felt like a repeat of the first time this had happened. They met and set up for a picnic. They had let out their Pokemon. They made small talk as they prepared their food. It felt almost disappointingly normal… except something was off. It felt like Arven was… holding himself differently. He was acting differently. It was like he was keeping his distance from her. He didn’t casually pat her shoulder, or pick chopped lettuce off her cheek when it somehow managed to get there, again, as she was cutting vegetables. It was weird. It wasn’t right.
They ate in semi-silence. Juliana barely tasted her sandwich, and she suspected Arven felt the same way.
When they were done, Arven left out a toneless laugh. "Mmm, that hit the spot!" He lied. He laughed once more, standing and surveying everything, placing his hands on his hips. Juliana stood as well, going to start cleaning up, but he noticed. "Oh! Uh…" Juliana looked up and found his gaze under his mop of hair, and it suddenly occurred to her that that was the first time that day that they had actually met each other’s eyes. He seemed to come to the same realization, because he quickly turned away and cleared his throat. "Actually, before we clean up, maybe it’d be nice to just… sit?"
Okay.
"And… and maybe we could… recall our Pokemon for a little while?"
They did so. Juliana suddenly realized how alone they were, on that lonely hill under the sinking sun. Again, Arven seemed to read her mind, because he stepped back a little. "So, uh…" He tilted his head away, running his hand through his hair. "It’s uh, a nice sunset!"
It was.
"It’d be nice to… watch."
…it would be–
"I’m sorry!" He blurted.
Huh?
"I didn’t realize how that sounded! I swear! I’m not trying to…!"
Not trying to what?
Arven covered his face and groaned. When he finally pulled his hands down, he was a warm shade of red.
"I’m sorry. I need to explain some stuff."
They sat in the grass, a very proper distance of space between them. Juliana couldn’t help but note the deja vu– the preparation of the sun for sunset, the scent of grass and wildflowers in the air. But the mood couldn’t have been more different. Back then the two of them had sunk into a comfortable sort of peace, Arven letting his head tip back and breaking into a smile that had practically melted Juliana’s heart. Now he was so stiff, all his limbs bunched up onto each other, his arms around his knees, his eyes resolutely on the ground and away from her.
"When we…" He started, and then stopped, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. He tried again. "A couple weeks ago, the pipsqueak– Penny found me after class. She said she needed to talk to me about something. It turned out she had…" He inhaled through his nose. "She had seen us together after one of our picnics. She had seen us…" His hand reached out to grasp a bit of grass between his thumb and pointer finger. "Wrestling, together."
Ah.
Wrestling? That’s what it was?
"She saw us… she saw me…" Arven’s fingers twisted, breaking the blade between his fingers. "Doing that… to you…" His face grew tremendously red. "And…"
And Penny had some opinions about that, Juliana could only assume.
"I just-!" He suddenly whipped his head towards her, a pained look on his face. "I never… I didn’t think about how that came off. I… me and Mabosstiff…" Losing his nerve, Arven tilted his face away once more. "That’s just how we played together when we were kids… when he was just a Maschiff. It’s how most Canine Pokemon socialize with each other when they’re small, you know? Roughhousing. Play fighting. Pretending to bite each other, or…" He blushed. "Knock each other down…"
Oh.
Oh, Arven.
"But, well, haha…" He let out one of those fake laughs again. "Stupid Ol’ Me… didn’t realize how that probably came off… doing that with… you." Arven’s head was entirely turned away from her now. The orange sunlight caught his hair, turning it near-scarlet. "I didn’t realize it… I never would have realized until Penny said something… even Nemona…"
Nemona was there too?
Arven’s chuckle was mixed with a sigh. "Yes, Nemona was there too, and even she said something like 'that’s kinda weird Arven!' Being told you’re weird, by Nemona… just the icing on the cake."
He tried to laugh, but it sounded tired. A powerful urge to squeeze his hand went through Juliana, but before she could even think about the implications of that, Arven finally managed to face her.
"I’m sorry, Jules. I’m really, really sorry. I swear, I never meant to freak you out or anything… I didn’t think about how it must have been super weird… and really uncomfortable… having some…" He let out another stiff-sounding chuckle. "Some big idiot meathead get in your space like that… manhandling you…"
Juliana almost felt like crying. No, it wasn’t like that. It had been… strange, sure, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.
She had never felt uncomfortable with him.
He let out a dry ha when she said that, in a way that told her that he didn’t believe her at all. "Look, little buddy, I’m tough, okay? You can be honest with me. I get it now, after hearing it from Penny… I know that’s a weird way for a guy to act with you... even if we were dating, it would have been weird for me to do that out of the blue, and I know you don’t feel that way about me…"
But it was still just a misunderstanding. He hadn’t been trying to…
…wait.
Why did he say it like that?
Arven blinked. "Huh?"
I know you don’t feel that way about me.
Why that specific wording?
Why not something like, "and we’re not dating?"
"A…" Arven coughed, bringing up his hand over his mouth and looking away again. "C-come on little buddy! I think you… you might be reading too much into things. I think we’ve established that I'm not really a smart guy!"
He laughed, and as he did his hair shifted to expose his bright red ears.
"I’m not smart… but I’m not so dumb that I don’t know that you’re basically the best thing that’s ever happened to me." Arven’s chin tipped down, his fluffy bangs falling to conceal his eyes. "You’re my… you’re basically my best friend, and I owe so much to you. And I would never risk ruining our friendship with something stupid like… like a crush." Before Juliana could interject, he suddenly looked up, his face breaking into a big, fake grin. "I mean, I almost ruined it just by horsing around!"
I know you don’t feel that way about me…
…even if I do.
Juliana stared at him with huge eyes, the missing sentence filling itself in her brain.
"So… yeah, you know." Arven was suddenly babbling, seeming more than aware how close he had come to saying it out loud. "If I ever do something weird like that again, just tell me and I’ll back off! Heck, give me a smack! I won’t hold it against you… you mean too much to me to do that." As if he could suddenly erase that last sentence, he abruptly threw his arms in the air, stretching and groaning in an exaggerated way. "Haaah!" He laughed. "Well, that’s enough making an idiot of myself today. I just had to get all that off my chest."
No.
"I promise, no more wrestling moves from your ol’ buddy Arven. Now then!" And he made to get up. "I think it’s time we get to tidying–"
Juliana wasn’t nearly as strong as Arven. He was much taller than her, and likely outweighed her by a couple dozen pounds. The only thing she could rely on was the element of surprise.
And fortunately, it was enough.
"-Huwuh–?!"
With every ounce of her weight thrown into the action, Juliana managed to knock Arven to the ground, her body following his.
Everything was quiet.
Daring to open her eyes, Juliana realized her face had landed around the crook of his neck. As she shuffled to get up, her ear was pressed to his body for a moment. The rapid pound of blood was almost startling, but she refused to lose her nerve. She backed up, using the force of her hands on the ground to lift her torso up off his.
Arven was looking up at her. His eyes looked like dinner plates– plates, she realized, because this was a rare appearance of the both of them. His lips were just barely parted, refusing to open or close a centimeter more. They looked frozen. All of him looked frozen, as if making himself gaze up at her was using every bit of his body.
They were in a perfect mirror to the first time he had done this to her, innocent and unthinking. Now she was on top of him… and now they had both done quite a bit of thinking.
"G… g…"
It took every last scrap of daring in Juliana’s heart to lift her lips into an unsteady grin, her cheeks red and scorching with embarrassment.
"Gotcha."
Even as it felt like she might literally melt with affection for the boy laying under her, Juliana couldn’t help but find Arven’s expression priceless. The only thing that she regretted was that she couldn’t watch what his face did when she brought her lips down to meet his.