Hero of Kalos

Super Legends Set (2015)

Artist: TOKIYA

The squeeze of her hands lingered in memory even as her fingers withdrew. He missed the contact almost immediately, though the fondness in his gaze only deepened as he watched her retreat toward the hallway.

"Now that's a terrifying thought." He replied. "Imagine the headlines. Local designer spotted buying coffee in pyjamas. Industry thrown into chaos. I'd never recover from the embarrassment."

His eyes followed her glance toward the familiar corridor, catching the slight reluctance hidden within her movements. It stirred something soft in his chest, something that made the distance between them feel far greater than the few steps she had taken.

When she looked back at him, smiling in that quiet, wholehearted way she possessed, his own expression softened in answer.

"I was not planning on it."

Adam folded his arms loosely across his chest, leaning back just enough to appear casual despite how reluctant he felt to let her disappear from sight.

"You take all the time you need. Work will still be there when we're done pretending it doesn't exist."

A faint grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"And for the record, if you're making requests, I expect the same courtesy. No vanishing acts."

His gaze lingers, and Serena cannot help but stay frozen in the doorway for a moment longer, the corners of lips lifting with each and every word that he ushers into the space between them. Her smile a gentle sort, the kind that might, for a moment, glitter in yellowing and warm light like a few, forgotten speckles of dust. Something rare, something that can only exist when left to be. It trembles before giving way to a breathless laugh, lifting her shoulders in a shrug.

“Well,” She says with a turn on her feet slow enough to face her towards the looming hallway and yet not quite enough to keep a shoulder, that smile, from moving with it, “There goes my idea of a daring climb down the balcony.”

-

True to her word, there is no vanishing act. Years of hurrying from one whose beginning and end are obscured with layers of tulle and glitter and ornate pieces to the next—all with the end result as perfect as the last— her greatest aid. She emerges from the corridor in no spectacular outfit, but no affront to fashion either. Plain, undetectable—the same as the night before so that she might sneak off into the darkness unseen by prying eyes. There is no fanfare as she steps back into the main room of the apartment. Just quiet steps, arms crossing loose at her waist, and a few, sacred seconds to take in it all. Him, his pokemon—the way they simply are.

“Sorry for keeping you waiting,”

And she knows, no matter how such a phrase were to be said, he would dismiss it with a statement of her not needing to apologise—that it is never needed. Fuel even more so for it to leave her lips, and further still for it to be said with that same, gentle grin. A hand runs through the ends of loose curls, one finger coiling them around another, and with the motion does she take all of her focus—save for grey eyes that stay fixed upon Adam’s form. No movement left unseen.

"You say that like half the city would not immediately try to make it fashionable." His fingers curled gently around hers as his face lit up in stark amusement. "Though I admit, the mental image of you trying to glare down reporters while your hair refuses to cooperate is almost worth the risk."

The amusement in his expression deepened at her mention of headlines. Adam could practically see them splashed across magazines and gossip sites alike, exaggerated beyond all reason. His nose wrinkled faintly in mock horror.

"Please." he replied, lifting their joined hands slightly. "I am well aware how wild the speculation can be. Showing up disheveled would only encourage them.” Another quiet chuckle left him, softer this time. "And if anyone caught me in sleep clothes, every rival designer in Kalos would file a formal complaint on the spot."

For a heartbeat longer, he simply looked at her - sunlight catching at the edges of her features, laughter still lingering in the air between them. Then, with reluctant amusement, he inclined his head toward the bedroom.

He is right—she knows that. Claims of influence and mimicry that stems from existence alone, and an inability to care about making deliberate statements rooted in appearances. There would be, she argues, no better person in the region to know how one change in her style could bring about a much welcome or minorly hair-pulling shift in trends. And so she offers him a grin, a gentle squeeze of their hands. The lifting of the tops of cheeks towards warm and grey eyes that remain resting upon his features.

“It does give us time,” She says, “I think the last thing either of us need is any more stress than what is already waiting at work.”

Perhaps her unintentional shifts in fashion paradigms have not been too much of a headache, given how he looks at her. How she has remained for years a muse of his. How his store stands tall with his name in the face of boutiques full of exorbitant prices attached to lacklustre quality, rather than windows of vacant and distant memories.

“…Although, personally, I’d like to think that if you were to be caught in sleepwear, it would send all of the designers in the region into a panic. Afraid that maybe you had caught onto the start of a trend that they hadn’t noticed.”

There is a reluctance in the way that hands slip away from his, and yet no other moment seems the most opportune to—that could placate the cold that washes over fingers and palms, in the air that comes between them as Serena takes a step back. A glance tosses itself over her shoulder—to where the hallway rests, just as it had been this morning. As it had been last night, only more familiar. And with hesitance in the most minute details of movement does the heroine make her way back over to it, stopping only to look back to Adam.

sunset version <3

(sunset alt version below)