Better Together [Yuletide 2020]

This is one of my Yuletide gifts, for bay, based on the prompt of seeing some cute moments between Professor Kukui and Burnet. Pure lovey moments and nothing less.

---

“H-hey! Hey! TAXI!”

Among all of the people and other cars bustling around in the cold, one cab manages to hear the cry of desperation and hurries to stop and pull over. Two young trainers scramble through everyone crowding the sidewalk and practically throw themselves at their ride before the driver can change their mind.

“Hey, to the train station! Hurry!” one of them says a bit too loudly as they clamber inside.

“Please,” the other adds, doing his best to look apologetic at the eyes glaring in the rearview mirror, “And thank you for stopping, by the way.”

The driver silently rejoins traffic and does their best to weave in and out of cars as they head in the direction of the Saffron Train Station.

“We really need to get there, like, right now,” says the one trainer. He does his best to help the car move along by tapping anxiously on the front seat, which does not help at all.

“Maybe next time you don’t stop to let a vaporeon hit you with a bubblebeam, eh, Kooks?”

The reminder of why the two are late to their train seems to set the one into a trance. To his friend, it may seem stupid to let pokémon attack him (and even sometimes knock him out) but over their travels he’s learned far more about different moves than the average trainer. Their speed, duration, and most importantly just how hard some of them hit. His philosophy is if you know exactly what an attack feels like, you can better gauge how it will play out against your pokémon during a battle. It’s definitely saved him from losing a battle on more than one occasion.

Plus, people will remember him - Ikaika Kukui, the trainer who is a master of pokémon attacks.

Snapping back to reality as the cab speeds through a changing stoplight, Kukui turns to his friend and grins.

“Next time, I’ll have it use quick attack instead so that I don’t have to dry off,” he says, which earns him an eye roll.

“You’re going to break something, or give yourself a concussion one of these times,” says his friend, adding, “Seriously.”

"Shhh, Molayne, my dude, it's all in the name of science," Kukui says, pressing his finger into his friend's lips to shush him. Molayne leans back but Kukui only persists.

"Okay, fine!" Molayne laughs, "If we make it on the train to Goldenrod in time, I won't say another thing about it."

They shake on it, as they have done countless times back in Alola and since arriving in Kanto, and just like all of the other times, things do not work out in their favor. Despite Kukui's attempts to get the driver to go faster and keep time from moving forward, they pull into the station just as the train is leaving. That doesn't stop Kukui from nearly running headfirst into the moving train, thinking that if he can approach it like a body slam, he'll be able to stop it and climb aboard. Luckily for him, Molayne grabs his arm in time to save them a trip to the Saffron Hospital. While Kukui wallows in defeat, Molayne returns to the honking cab driver and pays their toll.

Once Kukui has accepted the fact that they will not be making it to Goldenrod in time for the yearly trainer Christmas party, he and Molayne find a nearby directory of the city and try to figure out what to do for their extra night in Saffron. In true Kukui fashion, as soon as Molayne starts spitting out possible plans and logistics so that they make sure to not miss the train tomorrow, his mind wanders and soon he is looking around the platform at the people and trainers passing by with their pokémon. His eyes are immediately drawn to a hauntingly gorgeous absol sitting faithfully by its trainer's side. It looks straight ahead, past everyone walking around, but anyone who knows anything about Dark-types knows it is fully aware of its surroundings, watching for any danger or suspicious activity. Kukui can't help but stare - he's never had the chance to see an absol up close. Even in their native region they're pretty rare, both for the fact that people misunderstand them as bad omens and that they tend to remain up in the mountains and away from humans.

He wonders who managed to catch something so unique, and his eyes look at the trainer standing next to the pokémon. She is talking to a few people who he assumes are her friends and is taken back by how much she stands out against them. They say that humans tend to look like their pokémon, and for her it's no joke - not only is she wearing the punkiest black leather jacket with studs that nearly resemble the absol's claws, but her styled, fluffy hair is so white it's almost as if she trimmed her absol and made a wig from its fur.

"-and then as long as we're back at the Center by- hey! Where are you going?!"

Molayne throws his hands in the air when Kukui makes no movement to acknowledge that he heard anything his friend says. Instead, he continues walking towards the trainer and her pokémon, carefully adjusting his steps when he sees the absol shift its gaze ever so slightly to watch him approaching. Standing a good distance away so that he doesn't alarm it, he calls out to its trainer.

"Hey! Your absol is-" he starts to say, but whatever he was about to say gets lost in his head as the trainer turns around. Her eyes are outlined in a dark liner, but even if they weren’t, they would pierce him just the same. If he had to choose, he would rather startle the absol than her any day.

"-neat," he ends up finishing. "Very... neat."

That must catch her off guard because her eyebrows raise before furrowing. Then she tilts her head down and says, "Neat?"

"The neatest."

And he grins, typical dumb confidence returned. Molayne has caught up to him, shoulders slumped knowing that he's going to have to repeat all of their options again when Kukui is done being... well, Kukui.

"I haven't seen many Dark-types around Kanto, and I've never gotten to see an absol in-person. Did you catch it in Hoenn?"

Just as he thinks he's managing alright, she simply replies, "No," and turns back to her friends who try not to laugh. Most of the time Kukui does just fine in awkward situations - not that much phases him (Molayne would say it's all of the times that he's been hit with pokémon attacks) - but he is at a loss for words for a moment when she returns seamlessly to whatever she was talking about with her friends.

“Huh. Well, that’s new,” says Molayne as he slaps Kukui on the shoulder. Even though he can be too energetic and excited for most people, they usually grin and bear it when Kukui is rambling at them about something.

He’s about to ask her if it knows any strong Dark-type attacks, but thinks twice to avoid getting another one-word answer.

Instead, he asks, “What attacks does it know, if you don’t mind me asking?”

She takes her time to finish whatever it is she’s telling her friends and then slowly turns to look him in the eye. Before she can potentially tell him that yes, she does mind him asking, or before she gives him another short response, he thinks to add some context.

“I’m really interested in learning about pokémon attacks,” he explains, “I think- I think it really helps me understand them, you know, better. Especially in the middle of a battle. If I know what my pokémon can handle, I let them attack me every now and then. I know how it feels, that way… um…”

It hits him that what he’s saying isn’t coming out right and he loses his train of thought. He wouldn’t say that the woman looks stunned by what he’s said, but he can definitely tell that she is at a loss for words. She eyes him up and down while her friends stare at him, wide-eyed, wondering now why this crazy man who lets pokémon attack him is insisting to keep interrupting their conversation. When she’s made up her mind on what to say, she looks directly into his eyes.

“I would never make my pokémon attack an innocent person, even if they were asking for it.”

Kukui holds up his hands and before she can turn away again says, “No no no, I don’t want you to have your absol attack me, I just…”

He pauses to collect his thoughts. This isn’t what he wanted, and for some reason he just keeps making things worse by continuing to talk.

“I’m sorry,” he says, defeated, “I get excited to meet new pokémon and learn about them, but I shouldn’t have interrupted your conversation… or kept bothering you about it… I’m sorry.”

In a rush, he turns around to get out of the situation and leave the women be, but before he can get Molayne to follow him on his way out of the station, the woman stops him.

“I’m not sure what attacks it knows,” she says, and when he perks up and turns around, she continues, “I’m watching it for a friend who is out of town. She rescued it from a shelter. It’s mostly a companion for her, not a fighter.”

Kukui isn’t sure what to say so he just smiles and nods.

“That makes sense,” he finally says, “There are a lot of absol who get captured young and used by trainers on their journeys, but most give them up once they retire. And it’s not the most… desired pokémon as a pet.”

It takes everything in him to not look the absol in the eyes, afraid it will understand what he’s saying and curse him with a natural disaster.

To make up for the comment, he says, “There really should be more education about proper care for pokémon post-journey, whether or not that’s the case with your friend’s absol. I’ve seen a lot of issues with that since we’ve been in Kanto.”

The woman raises her eyebrows at that and glances back at her friends.

“We were just talking about that, actually.”

Kukui feels his usual casualness return to replace the awkwardness of a few minutes ago and perks up even more.

“Yeah! There’s a shelter in almost every place we go, but most of them are going to have trouble rehoming pokémon like golem and rapidash in the middle of a city.”

“Exactly,” she replies, slowly nodding her head and eyeing him up. “So, you’re not from Kanto, then?”

“Nope! We hail from the beautiful region of Alola,” Kukui proudly tells her while throwing his arm around Molayne’s shoulders.

“We don’t have a League-”

“Yet,” interrupts Kukui. Molayne side eyes him.

“We don’t have a League yet on the islands so we came over to Kanto after finishing our island trial,” Molayne explains. The whole time to woman keeps eyeing Kukui and nodding to herself slowly.

Without warning she spins around and whispers something to her friends. Their eyes go wide and a bit of hurried back and forth whispering goes on before she turns around to face Kukui and Molayne again.

“Do you guys want to come out with us tonight? We’re going to hit up some clubs while we’re in Saffron if you’re interested.”

Kukui and Molayne look at each other but don’t need to ask if that’s alright. With no other plans due to them missing their train, they have no reason not to go out so they nod back at her, with Kukui adding an excited thumbs up.

“Cool. I’m Burnet, by the way.”


***


It's the middle of the day, and already Kukui has managed to get a slight burn on his arm. He's been hit with fire attacks before, but rarely. It takes serious training to get a Fire-type used to their own power and able to control it, so when he saw that trainer with their new darumaka he couldn't resist seeing what a weak fire fang feels like. It definitely wasn't a warm and fuzzy hug, but it was worth it, burn and all. If only he remembered his notepad, because now he has to rush back to the apartment to record all of his thoughts before they start fading into the recesses of his memory.

He's never liked crowds, and Straiton is just like any other overpopulated city. There are always too many people out and about and in his way, especially when he's in a hurry, which is almost all the time. He does his best to weave through them instead of barreling over anyone, and if he accidentally bumps someone too hard, he's gone before he can hear their complaint (though he does shout an apology to them either way). It’s just not his vibe to be in the hustle and bustle, but that’s most definitely a product of being an Alola native.

He tells himself he will be back home someday soon enough.

When he flies through the front door, his girlfriend nearly punches him square in the face. He really should know better than to rush towards her in any manner, but by this point she also knows that she shouldn’t expect him to always be calm and collected. After a quick apology he maneuvers around the technology that she has spread out around most of the main room of the apartment and goes into the bedroom to grab his notepad from the bedside table. A few minutes later she comes in, dressed head to toe in her crazy research getup, and leans in the doorway just as he is finishing up his thoughts with an eloquent, “does not feel very good after ten minutes of running.”

“What was it this time?” asks Burnet, knowing that there’s no use in chastising him for either letting a pokémon attack him or rushing through the apartment like he did. As long as he doesn’t mess up any of her work, she can deal with his haphazardness.

“Fire fang,” he says with a grin, “From a baby darumaka.”

She sighs and tries to give him a serious look, but can only do so for a few seconds before she’s grinning back at him and making her way to the bed. His eyes widen.

“No- NO!” he tries to protest. He knows what’s coming and knows there is nowhere to run.

Climbing onto the bed as much as her mechanical suit will allow, she carefully pins him down and starts to kiss him all over his face.

“You - can’t - stop - my - kisses.”

After a minute of struggling, he concedes. When she’s determined that the correct number of kisses have been administered, she slowly gets off of him and walks out to the hallway bathroom. When she returns, she’s holding a bottle of burn ointment in her hand. He takes it and starts applying it in gentle circles.

He asks, “How’s the dream stuff going?”

She thinks for a minute and then sighs. After getting her bachelor’s in dream studies and then her master’s in interdimensional studies, Burnet was approved for a grant to develop a radar device for locating what she has labeled as the “Interdream Zone,” a place between our reality and that of pokémon dreams, which she and one of her friends from college have done extensive research on. It’s all very complicated to Kukui, but he loves to hear what she’s discovered or how she’s made advances in the research.

“It’s going. The visoscope isn’t strong enough, so I’m trying to find a way to better compound what it does so that it’s able to get a more focused read on what I want.” She detaches a square device from her side, sits down next to him, and turns it on while she says, “You can kind of see some phenomena occurring-” she points at the screen to some barely visible auras dancing around their bedroom “-but I need to be able to see more in order to actually analyze it.”

She continues to go into some specifics and what she thinks can be done to get her work to where she needs it to be. Some of it makes sense in the way that she explains it, even if most of it sounds like she’s speaking a foreign language. Kukui listens and tries to understand. He nods when appropriate and asks if there is anything he can do to help.

“No, I don’t think so. It’s just going to take some time.”

They sit in silence, shoulders pressed together, and look at the visoscope’s screen. It weakly beeps and gives off a faint static sound.

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?” asks Kukui once more.

She shakes her head, “I wish there was, but for me to even get into what you’d need to know in order to start having you help, by that time I could-”

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?”

This time he leans into her. When she turns her head, now understanding, she smiles and he starts to make kissing noises at her.

“Ha, okay. I would absolutely love a massage, if you don’t mind.”

“One Kukui Shoulder Melter, coming up!” he cries as she starts to remove her dream suit.

She pauses. “’Shoulder Melter’?”

“What?” he shrugs, “I just took a fire fang to the arm only half an hour ago - I’ve got fire on my mind!”

“Okay, Mr. Inferno. Just make sure you get my deltoids pretty good. This suit makes them really tight.”


***


"Hey, babe, where are we putting the can opener?" he calls from the kitchen.

She gets up from pulling things out of boxes in the living room, Rockruff leading the way. When she turns the corner, Kukui is standing in the middle of the room, can opener in hand, with all of the cabinets and drawers open as he tries to organize everything.

"I had it in with the silverware, but I feel like every time I go for a spoon I'll be paranoid that I'm going to cut myself on it," he explains, "But when I tried putting it anywhere else, I kept thinking the same thing about any other spot."

"Hm," she thinks for a moment. They had tried before moving to go over where everything would be placed, but now that they are actually in their new home everything seems to not make sense the way they had settled on. Together, they start pretending how they would move around the kitchen normally to see what makes sense and eventually settle on throwing it in the back of the drawer with the saran wrap and aluminum foil. That way they'll only go near it if they absolutely intend to use it.

Kukui asks where they should keep their annoying abundance of Tupperware, and again they go through the motions until they decide that the cabinet above the microwave is the only one that makes sense since everything else will be taken. He kind of knew that that's where they would settle on, but he wanted to watch Burnet move around their new home. It's a huge step forward for both of them to finally move out of apartment life and into being homeowners. He couldn't be more proud to see her in a space that she's more than earned after all of the years she's spent studying and researching in her field.

Somehow, he manages to get her to continue helping him with the kitchen and then he follows her into the living room to help put things in their place. It's much more enjoyable to go through it all with her, just like how he weaseled his way into getting them to pack it all up together instead of each tackling separate rooms. It might take longer in the end, but it's something he would rather do together. It's not every day that neither of them has to be working, and soon enough it'll feel like that's all they do. So, he lets her pull things out of boxes while he organizes and finds a place for each item. All the while Rockruff watches them and sniffs everything to make sure it passes inspection.

They make it about halfway through their things for the living room before taking a break to eat. (Who knew hanging pictures and artwork could be so exhausting?) Kukui arranges their sandwiches and Burnet cuts up some apples. Rockruff manages to snag a piece that falls off the counter despite Burnet's best effort to get to it first, and then when she's not looking Kukui tosses a piece of lunch meat into Rockruff's bowl. It's not one of their finest meals, but all they want is sustenance to get them through the rest of the living room boxes and hopefully started on their bedroom. She doesn't know it, but he ordered a large print of a photo of them from back in Unova to hang over their bed. He doesn't much care for his appearance in it - growing out his hair was not a good look - but he knows that she likes it because it's from a day trip they took to Humilau. He tried to teach her some basic surfing lessons which resulted in her being a natural surfer, of course, and able to challenge him to see who could ride the most waves without falling.

She won – like always - and he won't deny that she beat him fair and square. He knows better than to let her win anything, because she will always know if he did and will make him compete again. Sometimes he likes to push her buttons and make it even more competitive, even if he knows he's going to lose.

"Babe?" he hears her say. His mind is returned to the present and somehow he knows that she's just asked him if he likes where they currently have the couch placed. Years of zoning out have taught him how to subconsciously still listen to parts of what people are saying to him, even if his mind is elsewhere.

"Yeah, I think it's good!" he says. "We can hang up that tauros painting on this wall when it gets here, like you were saying the other day."

He points to the wall behind him and takes a bite of his sandwich to try covering up the fact that he was daydreaming. At this point, she's used to it and doesn't mind. He will always come back to her when she needs him to.


***


There is something to be said about having space from someone. After Kukui went to Unova for school and Molayne returned to Alola, Kukui realized how much he appreciated having the opportunity to see his friend on a daily basis, and how much he took it for granted. These days, they're lucky if they speak on the phone once a week. But in a way it's good, because now when they get together, he wants to enjoy their time together and is sure that Molayne enjoys his more relaxed demeanor. It's a different friendship now, but deeper, and that probably wouldn't have happened without all of the years that they spent apart.

It's an entirely different feeling to have space from a significant other, however. And these days, with their busy work life and alternating schedules, it feels like he only gets a few hours with his wife at a time. They're past the stage of having to see each other to validate their feelings - were never completely in that stage, if they're being honest, what with how dedicated they've both been to their studies - but now on the days when they only spend an hour or so together before one of them has to go to bed to be up early, it gets tough on both of them. Even Kukui, who never thought that he would be so in love with someone on this kind of level.

It's why he waits anxiously on their bed, trying to pass the time by watching random videos on his phone, throwing himself back into the pillows when he looks at the clock and realizes only five minutes have passed since the last time he checked. Even though he knows she won't be home for another fifteen minutes, he gets up and peeks through the blinds anyway to see if her tauros ride is pulling in. Of course it's not, so he goes downstairs and walks through their house again. Rockruff lifts her head and watches him walk around the living room, watches him check everything one more time:

1. Her favorite candles are lit - have been for twenty minutes so that their scents fill the air - and the lights are off, save for the dim lamp by the front door.
2. He's got the dishes cleaned and put away.
3. Couch pillows = fluffed and arranged nicely.
4. Throw blanket is thrown perfectly across a cushion.
5. A playlist of Burnet's favorite Unovan punk band's ballads (something Kukui still doesn't get, but loves that she loves it) is playing softly through the Bluetooth speakers.

From the outside, it looks like he's already gone to bed. She'll think he turned in early so that he's ready for his busy day tomorrow; have a glass of milk and some leftovers and then turn in herself. They've both done this for each other before, but he knows that she appreciates it much more than him. Probably always will, too. He likes a clean and comfortable house, but his heart is too reminiscent of his trainer journeys and the roughness that comes along with them.

But he will do this for her, always.

Rockruff is enjoying some nice scritches on the head when the familiar sound of the ride tauros's hooves slowly approaches. She gets up and paces to the door while Kukui hops from foot to foot on the other side of it. It's all he can do without throwing it open and running out to tackle his wife before she can even step off of her ride. As usual when it appears that he's gone to bed, she takes her time gathering her things and sending the tauros on its way. By the time she's finally turning her keys in the lock, Kukui has inched closer to the door and is competing with Rockruff for who can see her first.

"Hi, bb," he says as she opens the door and sees him. She is barely through the threshold when he is throwing his arms around her neck and burying his face in her shoulder. On the ground, Rockruff stands on her hind legs and puts her front paws on Burnet to vie for her attention. When she struggles to shut the door, Kukui reaches behind her and does it himself, and then he's giving her quick kisses on her neck and up her face to the top of her head. She laughs and puts her arms around his waist.

"I wish you missed me while I was gone," she jokes, looking into his eyes for a loving moment before kissing him.

"You were gone forever!" he mock-whines when they break apart. He buries his face into her shoulder and adjusts so his arms are around her waist. When she moves to place her keys in the bowl, he hugs her tighter and playfully says, "No!" and moves her farther from it which causes her keys to fall to the ground.

"You made me drop them," she pretends to complain.

He replies, "Too bad. Rockruff can put them away."

She doesn’t argue him and wraps her arms around him as much as she can. This is how they stay, enjoying a moment together before another busy day begins.