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You meet Steven Stone on a Tuesday, which is almost poetic if you squint hard enough. Tuesdays are the forgotten days, the liminal hours between the promise of Monday’s fresh start and the hopeful anticipation of Friday’s freedom. If a week were a person, Tuesday would be the quiet sibling nobody notices until it breaks something fragile—like a glass, or a heart.
That day, you were breaking your back under the weight of your field pack, every strap digging into your shoulders like a reminder that you weren’t built for ease. Your sketchbook, soaked through from an unexpected drizzle, lay open on the cold stone steps of the Rustboro Museum, pages curling and bleeding ink into the wet air. You muttered curses under your breath, peeling apart the damp paper with a tenderness you rarely reserved for anything but your art.
“Is that a Sableye?” a voice asked, calm and clear, from just to your left.
You looked up.
There he was—Steven Stone. Silver hair that caught the drizzle like moonlight, eyes the shade of polished sapphires, and a shirt so impeccably pressed it seemed untouched by the weather or the world. His coat hung loosely, one hand tucked into a pocket, the other relaxed at his side. He looked like a man who had never smudged ink or soil on his hands, yet here he was, peering at your ruined sketchbook with something like polite curiosity.
“It’s a metaphor,” you said, surprised by your own honesty.
“For?”
“My life,” you replied, flipping to a page where the Sableye had become a watercolor tragedy—dark, chaotic, beautiful in its despair.
To your surprise, he laughed—a low, unpracticed sound, like a secret he wasn’t used to sharing. His hand lifted as if to reach for your sketchbook, then hesitated.
“That’s the most dramatic Sableye I’ve ever seen,” he said.
“He’s emotionally constipated,” you answered.
And just like that, it began—not with a battle, not with a mission, but with a joke, a soaked sketchbook, and a laugh that startled even him.
You didn’t know then, but he was going to linger.
&&&
The train rattled into Rustboro Station just as the morning mist was lifting, revealing the soft outlines of the town nestled between rolling hills and dense forests. You stepped onto the platform, the chill of early spring biting through your jacket. Rustboro was quieter than you expected—more a collection of familiar faces than a bustling hub. The scent of pine and damp earth filled the air, mingling with the faint hum of distant traffic and the occasional call of a wild Poochyena.
You adjusted your field pack, its weight a dull ache on your shoulders, and glanced at the folded map in your hand. Your destination was clear: the Rustboro Museum, a modest building of stone and glass that held more than just relics—it was a repository of Hoenn’s natural and cultural history. For you, it was also a refuge, a place to lose yourself in sketches and research, away from the noise of your own tangled thoughts.
The museum’s front steps were slick with rain from last night’s storm. You hesitated, then climbed carefully, pulling your sketchbook from your pack. The pages were dry for now, but you knew the drizzle was returning. You settled on the steps, opening your book to a half-finished drawing of a Sableye, its mischievous eyes gleaming with something unspoken.
&&&
After the sketchbook incident, Steven surprised you by offering to walk with you. The rain had eased to a mist, and the town’s streets glistened with fresh puddles reflecting the muted light.
“Would you like to walk? The rain’s lightening,” he said, gesturing toward a narrow path flanked by ancient oaks.
You nodded, grateful for the company.
As you walked, the conversation drifted naturally from Pokémon to geology, to the legends of Hoenn’s ancient stones—meteorites that fell from the heavens, the mysterious origins of the Regis, and the enduring mysteries of the land.
Steven spoke with quiet passion about his collection of rare minerals, each stone a story, a fragment of the world’s soul. You shared your own fascination with Pokémon behavior, your sketches a window into your restless mind.
The town faded behind you, replaced by the soft rustle of leaves and the distant call of a Taillow.
For the first time in a long while, you felt seen.
&&&
The swamp was a murky expanse of reeds and shallow pools, the water cold and unforgiving. Your cargo pants clung to your legs, soaked and heavy, as you coaxed the Wailmer toward deeper waters. The Pokémon’s eyes were wide with confusion, its massive body awkward in the narrow channel.
Steven’s voice broke through your frustration. “Do you always wear that when you go swimming?”
You looked up, startled by his clean boots standing on a rock, untouched by the mud.
“It’s field gear,” you said defensively. “It has pockets.”
He smiled faintly, stepping down into the water with effortless grace. The Wailmer relaxed immediately under his calm presence.
“You didn’t have to help,” you muttered.
“I wanted to.” His voice softened. “Besides, I wasn’t about to let a local researcher get eaten by a confused Wailmer and her own jacket.”
You laughed despite yourself, the tension easing.
&&&
Later that week, Steven invited you to the museum after hours.
The city outside had quieted to a hush, and inside, the museum felt like something out of a dream—solemn, still, sacred. Only the soft hum of electricity stirred the silence, each hallway lit by the warm, low glow of display cases. Glass reflected glittering fragments of ancient minerals, casting tiny constellations across the polished floor. Fossils sat beneath spotlights like relics of a forgotten prayer. Time, here, felt slow.
He led you through the galleries like he was guiding you through something personal. Reverent. Every turn was deliberate, every exhibit touched with a kind of quiet affection. You followed him deeper into the geological wing, where the lights burned just a little warmer.
“This one,” he murmured, stopping before a dark velvet pedestal. “This was the first stone I ever collected.”
A chunk of adamantine sat nestled inside the case—shardlike and impossibly dense, its black surface fractured with glints of indigo and violet. You leaned closer, breath fogging the glass.
“It looks like it remembers being part of a star,” you whispered.
Steven glanced at you, something unreadable passing over his face. He smiled—small, quiet, and sincere.
He showed you a polished geode next, split in half like a broken heart. The inside shimmered with crystalline veins, catching the light in a way that felt almost supernatural. You said so, and he laughed—not loudly, but real. The kind of laugh you wanted to bottle.
When you reached the final wing, you hesitated.
Then, wordlessly, you slipped your sketchbook from your bag. Flipping to the pages you never showed anyone, you held it out.
He took it like it was fragile. Like it mattered.
His fingers hovered over the page—a sketch of a young Steven with his father’s hands, standing beneath a museum banner. Another of a boy curled in a chair, more shadow than form, his lap scattered with stones. Each one drawn with careful lines, quiet love.
When he looked up, his eyes were softer than you’d ever seen them.
He closed the sketchbook gently. “Thank you.”
His voice had changed. Thicker. Barely above a whisper.
He didn’t say much after that. But he spoke of his father—of a man carved from expectations, from legacy, from walls so high they blocked out the sun. Of how heavy it felt to bear the Stone family name. Not because he hated it, but because he wasn’t sure it had ever been his to shape.
You didn’t interrupt.
You just stood beside him, beneath the weight of centuries and starlight, and listened.
And in that hush—surrounded by glass, stone, and breath barely dared—you felt something shift.
A fragile trust. Like the first crack in the ice before spring.
&&&
The stars above Meteor Falls were bright enough to feel like promises. You sat beside Steven on a smooth boulder, the sound of cascading water filling the silence between you.
“If you were a Pokémon,” you said, “you’d be a Carbink.”
He blinked. “A… Carbink?”
“Yeah,” you nodded seriously. “Sparkly. Defensive. Emotionally unavailable.”
He didn’t smile immediately. But eventually, the corners of his mouth tilted. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should,” you said, a little too softly.
The silence after was heavy in a familiar way. Not awkward—just full. Brimming with things neither of you were ready to say.
You wanted to ask him: Have you ever been in love?
You wanted to tell him: I have. It’s you.
But instead, you drew a funny little sketch of him riding a Carbink like a steed. He laughed again—short and warm, the kind that you wanted to catch in a bottle.
He never pulled away when your shoulder touched his.
But he never leaned closer, either.
&&&
You don’t remember the fall.
One moment, you were hiking a ridge, talking too fast about Absol migration patterns. The next, you were weightless. Then pain. Then dark.
When you wake, it’s to the sound of rain tapping against glass. Your head throbs. Your ankle is wrapped. Your arms ache. Everything smells like antiseptic and moss.
Steven is there, slumped in a chair beside you, eyes closed, one hand loosely holding yours like he doesn’t remember grabbing it.
Your throat burns. “Hey.”
His eyes snap open.
He looks like hell—hair messy, shirt rumpled, worry carved so deep into his face it hurts to see.
“You’re awake,” he says, and the relief in his voice is something unnameable.
You smile. “You stayed.”
“Of course I did.” He says it like it’s obvious. Like there was no universe where he would have left.
You feel suddenly, stupidly close to crying.
“I—Steven, I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. I—”
“Don’t,” he cuts in. His voice cracks on the word. “Don’t apologize.”
He leans forward. His hand tightens around yours. “I thought—” He stops. Swallows. “You could’ve died.”
You watch him. This man who speaks in quiet precision. Who chooses his words like precious stones.
And right now, he’s unraveling.
You whisper, “But I didn’t.”
He looks at you like you’ve missed the point entirely.
And maybe you have. Maybe you’re still pretending this isn’t what it is.
You reach for him with your free hand. It’s clumsy, but he catches it. Cradles it like it matters.
“I love you,” you say, because you’ve run out of ways to pretend you don’t.
Steven doesn’t move. Not at first.
Then, slowly, he exhales. And you realize how long he’s been holding his breath.
“I know,” he whispers.
That hurts more than it should.
You try to pull your hand away, but he doesn’t let go.
“I know,” he repeats, voice raw. “And I didn’t think I was allowed to love you back.”
The world goes very still.
“Why wouldn’t you be?”
He laughs, shakily. “Because you’re light, and I—I’m everything that hides from it.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” you say. “And I once interviewed a guy who tried to marry a Claydol.”
His mouth twitches.
You reach up and touch his face. “You’re allowed. Steven. You always were.”
&&&
The days that followed blurred into something slow and strangely sacred.
Pain came in waves—dull, blooming aches that settled into your bones—but Steven never left. He stayed in the hard-backed chair beside your hospital bed, too tall for the space, too quiet for the sterile buzz of machines. He was constant in a way nothing else had ever been. An anchor with blue eyes and hands that never stopped moving.
He brought you tea in the mornings—rooibos, still steaming, always with the tag still dangling over the rim like a forgotten ribbon. It made you smile. He always noticed when you smiled.
Sometimes, he read aloud from his research notes, voice low and even, stumbling slightly over his own meticulous handwriting. He pretended it was to “keep you mentally stimulated.” You both knew it was just an excuse to stay.
One afternoon, you woke to the soft rustle of paper and saw your sketchbook spread open across his lap. The spine was split, pages water-warped from the fall, your half-finished drawings bruised with stains.
He was stitching it back together. By hand. Thread slipping carefully through punched holes, fingers steady and unhurried. You watched him for a long time without speaking, and in that silence, something fragile inside you settled.
Every stitch was a sentence he didn’t know how to say.
Every glance was a question he wasn’t ready to ask.
You began to notice the small things.
The way he always touched your hand twice—once casually, once like he needed to make sure you were really there. The way he brushed your hair away from your face with an absent tenderness, like it had become habit. The way he sat too close during visiting hours, like proximity might guard you from pain.
He never said what you knew lived in the quiet between you. But he didn’t have to.
It was there in the way he adjusted your blankets at night when he thought you were asleep. In the way he leaned into your laughter, like it filled something in him you couldn’t see. In the way his eyes lingered—just a little too long, just a little too gentle—when you looked away.
You used to believe love would find you in some dramatic crescendo. A kiss in the rain. A confession under the stars. Something cinematic. Something earned.
But this—this was something else.
Love, you realized, wasn’t loud.
It was the steady warmth of tea in the morning. The sound of pages being turned beside you. The quiet weight of a man choosing you, again and again, in a room that smelled like antiseptic and time.
And maybe that was better.
Maybe that was real.
&&&
When you finally left the hospital, Steven was the one waiting at the bottom of the steps, arms crossed loosely, the sun slipping behind him like a shy promise.
He didn’t ask if you were ready. He simply said, “Come with me to Dewford.”
His voice was soft, hesitant. Not a command. Not even a question. Just a hope.
You tilted your head. “Is this a recovery trip, or are you secretly asking me on a date?”
His lips twitched—almost a smile. Almost. “A field trip,” he said. “If you want.”
You reached for his coat sleeve, fingers brushing the edge. “I want.”
The ferry to Dewford moved like a dream—slow and steady, slicing through a silver sea beneath a sky brushed with soft strokes of blue and ash. Clouds gathered in languid spirals, too tired to storm. The wind curled around you like a quiet lullaby.
You sat beside him on the sun-warmed bench, sketchbook balanced on your knees. He read a book with the patience of someone who didn’t mind waiting forever, as long as you were near.
At some point, your pencil slipped from your fingers. You leaned into him, head resting against his shoulder. Your breath deepened, softened. Sleep came easier than it should have.
He stilled beneath you.
As if even breathing too loud might wake you.
And so he sat, unmoving. A monument to restraint. A steady lull in the rhythm of the sea.
His coat slipped from the bench and pooled at your side, forgotten. His hand hovered in the space between your arm and his—so close, yet never touching.
You slept the whole way.
When you woke, dusk had dusted the horizon in rose and amber. You blinked slowly, still tethered to sleep.
“Did I…?” you asked, voice gravel-soft, “Did I drool on you?”
His laugh was a whisper. “Only enough to prove you’re human.”
You smiled, too tired to be embarrassed.
“You didn’t move,” you murmured, shifting to sit up.
He met your gaze. “You needed rest,” he said simply, and then, almost to himself, “You never let yourself rest.”
You didn’t know what to say to that.
So you didn’t.
The shore at Dewford was still warm from the sun. The ocean lapped at your ankles in quiet intervals, like it was keeping time just for you. Wind tangled your hair and kissed the salt onto your skin. You laughed as a school of Wingull dive-bombed a nearby sandwich you weren’t even eating.
Steven trailed just behind you, his shoes in one hand, his silence soft. When you threw your head back and spun in the sand like someone who’d forgotten the taste of gravity, you heard him laugh—not out loud, but in that reverent, invisible way he always had.
You turned to him.
He was already looking at you.
Not just with his eyes—but with every piece of him that hadn’t dared speak your name until now.
He looked at you like something holy.
Like the sea had given him back something he didn’t know he’d lost.
Like your laughter had split open the silence inside him and filled it with light.
You smiled at him, wide and free.
And for the first time in a long, long time—
he smiled back.
&&&
Love doesn’t arrive like the movies.
It’s not a sweeping kiss in the rain. It’s Steven bringing you tea with the tag still in the cup. It’s you sketching his profile while he reads research notes aloud just to make you smile. It’s the way he now touches your shoulder, your hand, your cheek—like he’s reminding himself this is real.
You don’t leave Hoenn for a while. Not because he asks, but because he looks at you like you hung the moon over Sootopolis and you’re finally, finally ready to believe him.
You fall asleep on his shoulder during a trip to Dewford. He doesn’t move the whole ferry ride.
Sometimes, you wake up to his voice murmuring about stones and starlight, low and lovely and just for you.
And sometimes, when you laugh—loud, free, unfiltered—he looks at you like he’s hearing the universe start again.
He never says “I love you” the way you do: easily, constantly, like a rhythm. But he says it in other ways.
In the sketchbook he repairs by hand.
In the mornings he lets you ramble about Pokéball design while he cooks.
In the way he always, always stays.
You were wrong, before.
Love doesn’t have to look like the movies.
It can look like this.
And if you’re lucky—it will.
&&&
You find the note tucked between the pages of your sketchbook.
It isn’t addressed. It doesn’t need to be. The handwriting is meticulous—Steven’s, unmistakably so—and the paper is the kind he uses for field reports. Sturdy. Measured. Understated.
But the message?
The message is not.
I’ve never liked being looked at.
But the way you draw me—
It doesn’t feel like being seen.
It feels like being remembered.
Thank you for making me real.
Your breath catches somewhere between a smile and something close to tears.
Beneath the words, he’s sketched something. It’s rough. Messy. The lines are stiff and too precise in some places, hesitant in others. But you recognize it instantly.
It’s you.
Asleep on the ferry, your head on his shoulder. Hair wind-tousled, mouth slightly open, sketchbook fallen at your feet. He’s even drawn the smudge of graphite across your knuckles.
It’s not perfect. It’s not even particularly good.
But it’s you. As he sees you. As he wants to keep you.
And somehow, that’s more than enough.
Later, you find him on the porch—knees drawn up, mug in hand, the sea humming in the distance.
You sit beside him in silence for a while, letting the quiet settle around you like a shared breath.
Then softly, without looking up, you say, “So… when were you going to tell me you draw, too?”
He blinks at his tea. “I don’t.”
You tilt your head. “Steven.”
“I sketch things. Occasionally. Poorly.” He clears his throat. “It’s not the same.”
You smile. “It is when it’s me.”
He’s quiet for a long moment.
Then he says, like he’s still surprised by it, “You’re the first thing I’ve ever wanted to remember that way.”
You don’t answer with words.
You just reach for his hand, and feel the way it fits against yours—awkward, calloused, steady. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away. He just lets it happen, like he always has.
The waves roll in.
The sketchbook lies open behind you, your drawings fluttering in the breeze.
And Steven—careful, quiet Steven—leans into your shoulder like he’s finally found the place he was always meant to rest.