"afraid it'll sober me up and take this thing away from you?" he challenges in a frisky tone.

there was a certain smirk on his expression, which fades into neutrality quickly. a second later after the shift, kyle turns on his back and buries his face on a pillow, relishing in its coldness.

"did ya get me drunk for this?" he asks, voice muffled. the slurred manner in which he talks was still apparent regardless.

he lifts his head up and turns to noah, looking at him with hazy eyes. he opens his mouth to talk, but no words come out, and instead, he returns back to his pillow.

the certain spunk he carried from earlier has expired.

"just do what ya want."

there was a feeling of guilt when he hears noah blaming himself. he grips on his pillow harder as anger towards himself shows on his minute actions.

"no, no. it's not like that!

the stroking of his head eases kyle. slowly, he turns his head to the side, revealing half of his face to noah from the pillow. his eyes look awkwardly away from noah for a moment before he finally musters the confidence to look at him in the eye.

"noah, how long do your crushes and flings and relationships usually last?"

the question was abrupt and all of a sudden. his hand reaches for his shoulder, where he finds noah's. he holds them with interlocking fingers and brings it close to his face, lips touching the back of noah's hand.

kyle finds himself looking at noah intently as he waits for an answer. no smiles or frowns or furrowing of eyebrows exist in his current expression besides plain curiosity.

"i... i'unno..."

kyle was always uncertain, but it felt more evident more than ever. even with the inebriation in his system freeing him up from his inhibitions, everything still was influenced by his indecisiveness.

he has an answer in his head, though every time he wants to say it, fear strikes in. kyle remains in denial of the attraction noah shows, unsure whether it was superficial or not. kyle is someone greedy, wanting more than words and promises to ascertain noah's permanence in his life.

despite of this, kyle doesn't really want to take the first step.

"it would've been good if it's just a fling so i won't feel bad once this ends." the answer comes late, voice weak but calm. he grips onto noah's hand, wanting to keep noah close. "it's gonna last at least a year though, right?"

"yeah, but you're gonna burn out fast and get tired of this and..."

the whining trails off.

kyle lets noah drag him close to him, leaning on his chest as he had intended. it was more rigid and uneven compared to the pillow, but he finds it more comfortable to rest on. kyle calms down once more, letting himself drape over noah.

"is this how your relationships usually start?" he inquires soon after. "you've got, like, twelve or so before. what makes this-- our thing-- different from those?"

his hand finds one of noah's hand and drags it all the way to his head in an indirect manner of telling him what he wants.

kyle tries his hardest to understand what noah meant. he blinks twice, the shift in position not eliciting a different reaction from the tipsy kyle, as he looks at noah from above.

"you're so vague i thought i was listening to myself."

he frees a hand and absently places it on noah's face. the bright expression blinds him, distracting him from what little control he has with his thoughts at that moment. kyle wants to keep talking for once, unsatisfied with the answers he got.

"i want something concrete. i want assurance." he grumbles as the next words buffer. "i don't think i've done anything to make you like me besides, well, my status, i think. in any case, it's the other way around..."

his words remain in his afterthought, wondering if he actually said the last part.

"is it money? can i keep you forever with money?"

keeping him in with money doesn't guarantee what kyle wants, but it nets him something close enough to it. still, he knows noah enough that establishing their relationship in that manner wouldn't work.

"it's just, i dunno, something i can ascertain, i guess." his forehead meets noah's halfway, relishing in the warmth of the contact. "would that have worked?"

his eyes close, dropping his weight on noah as he rests on top of him. instinct tempts him to give the person before him a kiss, having conditioned to return every act of affection from noah. he settles with pressing his face against his cheek, and then laying his head beside him.

kyle's skepticism and pessimism manifest in a frown after hearing noah's words.

"i don't believe you," kyle says upfront. he lifts himself up once more to establish eye contact. "how can people even let go of you? you kiss ass so much you basically let people hear what they want."

a sigh escapes him and he drops to his weight back again.

"people deny a personal cheerleader nowadays?" he mutters as he muses, inebriation failing to keep the thoughts to himself.

kyle picks up the tone of hurt in his voice, and it resonates with him, sharing the pain from the guilt. he doesn't want these kinds of foreign feeling he only experiences just now, but he has them nonetheless.

"i'm not... good with words. i'm also not confident that i'll keep up with your image of me, i guess."

he plays with noah's hair this time, a finger tangling itself within the damp strands of dark hair. he twirls and twirls until he takes the entire length before letting it go and repeating the process all over again.

"you're something i didn't know i needed until we met. always thought i'm fine living alone for the rest of my life and that a relationship is just a 'want' instead of a 'need', and i don't really want to get used to the feeling of dependence whenever you're around, but it's already happening so..."

it was noah's presence that disturbed his peace. it disrupted the equilibrium that kyle has set himself up for when he thinks he can finally stabilize it after rocket's invasion. it changed his life dramatically that he should be complaining about it.

but he finds himself cherishing it the most out of majority of things that he has.

"i only have a title. take battling away from me and i'm... less than ordinary, i think." no unique backstory that builds up to a good character exposition, no interesting personality that sets him differently from the rest... kyle thinks he doesn't have the makings of being a main character. "would you have taken interest in me if i wasn't elite four?"