Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon nor any of its associated characters, only the plotline and story that I came up with on my own. On that note, who even came up with that ship name -___________-

This is an AU that mostly follows my headcanon. It's slightly dark due to the fact that I was having a rough time while writing this. Might still contain triggers though. Sorry for the bad quality and the slow updates :/

~start~

The streetlights flicker, but they only don't see each other.

("We can't. You know we can't." We can't do this, we can't be this, we just can't can't can't.

"You're hurting. I'm hurting." I want to. You want to. So why not?

"But- but-" Silence.)

The sparks start to catch, the embers start to burn. It is the start of something, but what, they still don't know.

.

It is almost midnight as they race down the highway, lonely but not alone, alone but not lonely.

In the darkness of the car, his face is gaunt and tired, sharp angles marking out his distinctive features. His eyes, once golden and sparkling with mischief, are just common amber now. His hands grip the steering wheel too tightly, bones jutting out, fists clenched and fingers frozen pink. Numbly, his foot presses down even further on the accelerator, as if he's trying to speed away from an inescapable reality.

It makes him human, and so different. It makes her question how a supposedly smart and rational girl like Crystal could have just dropped him like that, no explanations, no apologies. It makes her heart ache for him and for herself, for the changes they've made for people who've never cared.

In contrast, her face is harshly illuminated with the glare of streetlights interspersed with gentle cracks of moonlight, her skin translucent and vulnerable. Her once-clear blue eyes are cloudy with tears and pain and something else, her lips painted scarlet like a red light. Her mind is confused and this is never a good sign, because she is never confused. Somewhere deep inside her, she senses tragedy and she senses the imminent storm.

It makes her human, and so beautiful. It makes him wonder how stupidly careless, no, reckless Green Oak could have been to leave such a girl behind. It makes his heart hurt for her, and for himself, and for the countless people they will destroy while trying to destroy their own pain.

There is something beautiful about speeding through a highway at night, with nothing to thwart that last, fatal crash.

(The dashboard reads 11:11; she rests her head on a shoulder of a shattered boy and makes a wish.

The dashboard reads 11:11; he glances sidelong at a beautiful broken girl and makes a wish.)

.

"You know, one would expect us to either be best friends or worst enemies. Don't you think?"

He accepts the proffered beer from her hand, making sure his fingers brush against hers lightly. "... Why would you say that? Because we're both players?"

"Mmm, nope. Try again." She grasps her own icy drink, knocking it back like a pro and closing her eyes as the cheap booze enters her system. Just a drop of brown makes its way past her red lips, sliding unnoticed down her white chin.

"Because we're messed up? In which case, your brother Silver should join the club. No offense to him, and don't you ever tell him I said that. I'd like to keep my bodily functions intact, y'know. What d'you say, Heartbreak Queen?" He downs half the can in one messy gulp, coughing rapidly and allowing the droplets to splash all over the sidewalk and onto the car that just happens to pass by (the owner of the Maybach flips him off, and he carelessly returns the gesture). She watches the concrete absorb the alcohol, eyes unfocused, and he knows her thoughts are elsewhere.

"Well, I think it's because we're both... you know." She waves a hand around carelessly, and he gets it. She just knows he does. It stems from the fact that they've had this complicated on-and-off, friends-with-benefits thing ever since high school, when he was the school's default burnout jock and she the dramatic queen bee. They'd spent their days cutting class and hanging out in the abandoned toilets, just smoking stolen cigarettes and drinking smuggled beer. It's a kind of thing you never really forget, really.

"I beg to differ. You're the cold queen of heartbreaks who doesn't let anyone in beneath your frozen mask, and I'm the pitiful one getting wasted in between lessons. Where's the similarity in that?" He lies down against the cold, silent walkway, contemplating. The stars sure look beautiful tonight-

"Ha, ha, very funny, Gold. You know you like to mess with people as much as I do." But the undercurrent in her words is strong, because what she really means is that they were both popular, crazy people who got undeniably ditched by (almost equally) popular, sane people who could tell that being with them could only end up in disaster. And they were right- everyone who had tried to be with them had ended up getting their fingers burnt and hearts shattered. But that was because they both liked said sane people, wasn't it?

"Look, Blue..."

"Best friends or worst enemies. But..." She wasn't quite sure what they were, exactly. "Rebounds? I think that's new." She stretches lazily, catlike, her face enigmatic and full of unfathomable expressions. He doesn't try to guess them, because he knows he will fail. There was only ever one person capable of reading Blue Okido like a book, and that one person was not her younger brother.

"That's what you think. I think it's entirely plausible," he drawls, just to see her Chesire- cat smirk appear. He reaches into the cooler box behind them, realising that it'd already been long emptied of its contents. A line of crushed aluminium cans greet him as he surveys the abandoned sidewalk. "Time to hightail it outta here, don'tcha think?"

"If you mean before the cops arrive to try and fine us for littering, then yes." She stands up abruptly, pausing to count the cans. "Twenty. Wow. I can't believe we're not totally trashed yet."

He just stands up and grabs her hand, watching as she turns to him innocently, just a quirk of the mouth betraying her thoughts.

"I certainly could do with a bit more... Excitement. I mean, the night's still young and all, right?" Implications, implications. His grip turns from tight to loose, his fingers dancing lightly on the delicate skin of her inner wrist, tracing butterflies over the harsh scar there.

"We do have to hide from the police... I'm pretty sure the owner of the pretty red car didn't like you spitting all over its shiny side doors, did he?" It's dangerous, her tone, but not in the way people have come to fear. And it sends thrills of excitement running through his veins- or maybe that's the booze, but, whatever.

"Yeah, well, I know places." He smirks at her, kicking the cooler box towards the direction of the flattened cans. It's just another deadweight they won't have to carry.

"Your call." Two words, whispered harshly against his feverish skin, and that's all it takes for him to make his choice.

They are the only ones who don't hurt each other, or maybe they do, (so badly that they can't tell the difference-) most of all.

.

She appears at the front of his house one night, looking almost like a train wreck. Almost, because Blue never looks like a train wreck. Only almost. She would kill him otherwise. But boy does she look broken, because she wordlessly grabs his hand and stuffs his backpack with drink and drags him away, away, away.

He lets her drive because she wants to (bad idea, but you only live once) and somehow they end up somewhere glitzy and far, far away from their hometown, without dying and/or becoming permanently disabled. He suspects the former is exactly what she'd intended, and he is right.

"I wanna be far, far away tonight," she tells him, eyes half- lidded and clouded terribly. Of course, it shocks him- she's always been the better at holding her drink, but then she's been downing shot after shot of the establishment's worst all night. It takes until she's on the verge of passing out, however, to convince her to tell him of what's happened. Her mental filters are way better than his, too.

"He- he, you know who I'm talking about, he just showed up outside my house earlier. I mean, not on purpose, 'cause he'd never do that, but- but he just, I don't know, he was crossing the stupid street or something, maybe. And he had this, this, girl attached to his arm, and, I don't know, but they looked happy and he didn't even realise it was my house and-" Her eyes widen to the size of saucers.

"What? What?! Was it- did he-" he shakes her, desperate for her to complete her sentence, but the mental puzzle pieces were already falling into place. Green Oak had always had an affinity with- with-

She refuses to say anything more, sealing her lips and looking away. Soon, they're both out on the dance floor, dancing and moving with almost anyone as if it'd take the pain away, blur out the sharp edges.

But only the drink does that. Soon, the both of them find themselves in yet another alley, sitting on a wall low enough for both athletic people to climb upon but too high for the less nimble. They puke hard into the trash cans positioned carefully below, stale, bitter vomit mixing with salty tears.

"I don't cry," she says, throat dry and scratchy. "I never cry."

"Neither do I." And there's something to be said about lying so blatantly, lying to themselves and to each other and to everything and everyone who gives half a damn.

"You still got that backpack?" He hands it to her, and she passes him a can in return. From the very base, though, she fishes out a pack of contraband for herself. Forget wimpy, girly, scented cigarettes- it's a night for something harder. The lighter she hid under layers of newspapers (oh, come on, alcohol is flammable) also makes a reappearance, and she only has to flick it once for a decent spark.

"The lighters always like you. Whenever I try, it takes me forever to light one," he grumbles. Tonight is a night for pretending, so he is okay and she is okay and everything is okay.

"It's in the technique." She waves the lighter around carelessly, too close for comfort. Yet her hair swipes over the flame tip, unharmed. She puts the stick to her mouth and lets it smoulder for a while, before cinching it between two fingertips and puffing out perfect smoke circles at him. He breathes in deeply, eyes never leaving hers. Effortlessly, she leans against the side of the wall, where someone surely lives on its other side.

"Heartbreak Queen..." She deserves that nickname. Even after something that should have crushed her so, her spirit is still strong (if flickering) and her makeup is still perfect and untouched. The only sign of her nervous energy is in the way her fingers keep moving nonstop, but they do that all the time, anyway. She is nothing if not an expert in the areas of adrenaline.

"Don't. Don't say it." The words come out cool and unconcerned, but only he knows the inner turmoil associated with them. He watches as she crushes the filter of the cigarette and moves it to the side of her mouth. She reaches for the matchbox she always carries, next to her knives, and she pulls out a match.

"Was it her." They come tumbling out from his tongue anyway, flat and monotonous like only she knows. Slowly, agonisingly, she places her fingertip on the edge of the untouched match and yanks backwards. A funny way of striking a match, but it's her way, so the normal rules don't apply. Out of experience and practice, her fingertip flits away from the edge quickly after it catches, and the flickering, orange flame looks beautiful in its own right in the night composed of blacks and greys.

"Do you really want to know?" The facade falls easily, like a sticker peeling away from the waxed sheet. Some things are easier to say when around someone who understands, who has been through exactly the same experience. Most things are easy to say when around someone who's just as high as you are.

The flame starts to creep, leaving hot, ashy cinders in its wake. She pulls the cigarette out with the other hand, stubbing it out against the wall without her eyes ever leaving the little fire. A little black circle marks the spot, and he finds it fitting that something marks their existence, their claim of ever having been here. "Yes."

"I think you already know the answer, then. Obviously it was Crystal." And all at once, it was as if his world was being torn apart again. Just the confirmation- and he started to break, from the inside out. He knew what she'd been feeling, of course, but the reopening of such a raw wound was, was...

He can't lie half as well as she can. Obviously, because she's the Heartbreak Queen and he's the Player but she was (is) Super Serious Girl and he's Smartass... The flame starts to burn away the middle of the match, and it's a good thing they're both not afraid of fire.

"The car still has gas, right?" He can't even conjure up some joke, some hint, some indication. But he needs something to fill up the ragged hole in his heart, and he needs it now, and after all, so does she. They jump down from the low wall without any hesitation, backpack in his hand.

The matchstick she holds burns out to the end, and she throws it down as it burns her fingertips, watching as it

(uses up all its fuel and dies, dies pitifully as nothing but a forlorn spark in a landscape of darkness)

catches onto some spare scraps of newspaper and spreads out, leaving destruction in its wake. Soon, the low wall that had provided refuge to them will be scorched and replaced, and the tin cans in which they vomited will be no more. Soon, the little flame will turn into a whirling inferno.

They're not going to be there when that happens.

.

And as she runs from the blaze, a fleeting thought crosses her mind. The hand holding hers somehow doesn't feel right, like their finger-spaces don't quite line up.

Maybe it's time to let him go.

~fin~

I'll leave you to interpret the ending however you want.