Sometimes Gavin likes to join Temp on his routine jogs, but as of late he's found himself too swamped with Rocket duties to feel comfortable letting them alone for mere leisure. He gets his workouts in the training room, instead, where he's easily found by his fellows in an emergency.

He misses Temp's company when they're both so busy, so like an eager puppy Gavin meets him in the call when he calls out his name.

"Course you can, love."

Temp might be all sweaty from his jog but that doesn't deter Gavin from wrapping him in a firm embrace. He extracts himself quick enough to let his lover get hydrated, leaning against the island.

"Shadow Pokémon?" He seems surprised. It's not something Temp usually takes an interest in, but the eager gleam in Gavin's amber eyes is enough to hint at his own passion. "Sure, yeah, go ahead and shoot."

Tempest Quinn

Cillian Quinn grabbing him when he's all hot and sweaty? Kind of nasty but Temp was cool with it. He finishes off his water bottle quick, giving a content sigh before he fills it back up to put back in the fridge.

"Will you tell me about them?"

While Temp had seen the Shadow Pokemon now he didn't really understand them. They were special and angry! Just like Gavin. And he loved Gavin for being special and angry so he would love the Shadow pokemon, too.

He took out the pokeball, idling with it, before he released the Shiny Shinx that had caused them to fight. She was able to open her eyes now but was still fresh and fluffy and young. Sleepy, as she always was, she stared up at Gavin from the floor.

"I've been thinking. I want to try and find that Luxray. It's like... well, it had to have wanted her for a reason, right? And I can't do that if I don't understand Shadow pokemon, right?"

It can be a dangerous thing, asking after someone's passion. Gavin's eyes light up, but he's self-aware enough to warn, "Love, I'll ramble on about them forever if you let me. What exactly did you want to know?"

He'd suspected this might have something to do with the Luxray. Their fight isn't often from the back of his mind but now Gavin fills the dark recesses of his thoughts with the radiant smile his lover had offered him when he'd agreed to the proposal. It helps to chase away the doubt, the lingering whisper of coward.

A brief glance is spared for the Shinx before he looks back to Temp.

"You don't need me to remind you they're dangerous," he frowns. "Mine are docile around me because of Lugia but most won't hesitate to rip your throat out should you approach them when I'm not around."

Tempest Quinn

"It's hot when you start using words I don't know." Stepping past the sleepy Shinx, Temp tries to steal a quick kiss now that he's hydrated and flourishing. "Your giant brain is sexy." A light tease but he found he meant it.

The next part does give Temp some pause. If Cillian Quinn looks close, he can see the other rolling what he said around in his mind.

"I've been training with Bongo." Admitted like it's a dark secret. But, to Gavin it might be surprising. Temp had been vocal with his partner about how much the Zarude, vicious and aggressive and wild, scared him to be around. Temp was never an exceptionally skilled Trainer; most of his pokemon were more mellow in personality.

"I also figure that if we can trap it, wouldn't that be better than just letting it run loose?" Unsaid, but if Gavin knew his bleeding heart Fiance well enough to read between the lines, was that Temp also felt bad for it.

Temp is offered a soft, secret smile reserved only for him. He kisses back, eyes closing, fingers tracing along his lover's jaw in a tender caress.

"Have you?" Gavin opens his eyes, brows arching.

Where most of his partner's Pokémon were as pleasant and mild-mannered as the gym leader himself, Temp's Zarude was a wild thing. Even Gavin was wary of the creature, though not quite so much as Temp himself must've been. Gavin's lips purse with worry that he doesn't express aloud; Temp is already being careful, surely, so a warning would be wasted breath.

There's a gleam in Gavin's eyes, again. His own ambition is dangerous when it comes to creatures such as these, but...

"You want it for yourself." Beneath Temp's pragmatism Gavin can glimpse that bleeding heart. Ordinarily he might make an argument toward entrusting Gavin with it's care — who better? — but his partner had all but moved in at this rate. He could help care for the beast, study it, keep it from going for Temp's throat while some semblance of an understanding was forged. He nods. "I'll help you, of course. It'll be safer if I do."

Tempest Quinn

A nod. The training was slow going at best- Temp was pretty sure that Bongo could sense his apprehension. Sometimes the ape would listen. Other times it would lash out and attack. Be it Temp, other pokemon, people... it was all just dependent on the pokemon's mood. Nothing he seemed to do could keep it calm for long. The only thing it seemed to want was a fight.

Something Temp could respect, but Temp was also not as purely destructive as the Zarude was.

"I want to reunite them. If the Luxray is really it's parent." So, in a sense... yes. Temp did want the Shadow pokemon he had seen. He wasn't sure if it was a good fit for him. Temp didn't have the same innate control with them that Cillian Quinn did. Honestly, even though he kind of understood them as a concept, at the same time... Something about them seemed so impossible. It was another one of those things he was too softhearted for.

"Do you want to do this outside? I know they can get kind of... stabby." His last encounter with the Alolan Sandslash comes to mind.

"Parent or no, it seemed to have some interest in your friend here."

He gestures down at the fluffy Shinx kitten padding around the kitchen floor. From the dining room adjoining, the curious gaze of a Lycanroc follows her every move, but the canine won't dare intrude upon the space to investigate.

Gavin shakes his head, glancing out the window. It's a hot day and even with the shade of their ever-reaching canopy, he doesn't relish the thought of spending any more time in the heat than he must.

"We can go downstairs." It occurs to him, then, that Temp doesn't know about downstairs. To his partner, this was a house with a single story. There's only a brief hesitation borne of habit before Gavin elaborates, "My lab is down there, as well as supplies in the event of a League takeover. Like a safehouse. And the garden. But there's enough space, and it's nice and cool."

Gavin fills a glass with water and takes a swig. "Now?"

Tempest Quinn

When Cillian Quinn mentions the Shinx, Temp leans over and scoops her into his arms. The dogs around here were well trained, so he trusted them. He just didn't trust her quite yet. "I'm thinking of naming her Mitten." A cutesy name for a cutesy feline. Temp didn't intend to make her a fighter, so she would probably grow up lounging on the furniture with his own canines. Mitten mewls i protest at first. As soon as she realize's she's safe in warm hands, she closes her eyes and her tiny purr box starts to rumble.

"Downstairs?" Is parroted. Then Gavin explains and Temp screws up his eyebrows and pouts. For just a moment, Gavin might think Temp is upset with learning this news.

"You mean we could have been playing sexy doctor and lab assistant this whole time and you didn't tell me?"

He glances around curiously, as if looking at the house with new eyes. Maybe looking for some type of hint or clue. A bookshelf with a weird book or a suspiciously large mirror he had somehow looked over every time he'd been in here.

"Now is good, if you're not busy. Oh, let me grab the treats, though."

Though 'Mittens' was indirectly responsible for the fight he'd had with Temp and the whisper of coward in the back of his thoughts, Gavin's lip twitches as the kitten snuggles up to his boyfriend and begins to purr. She was cute. Hard to believe she'd grow up into a Luxray, a species that still made Gavin's skin prickle if they got too close.

His stomach twists at Temp's expression. Was he angry at not having been told?

But then he speaks, and Gavin's own concern vanishes under a scoff of laughter.

"My lab is a sterile environment, thank you." Though the prospect is sort of appealing... not now! They had work to do!

So Gavin finishes his glass of water while Temp grabs the treats — Gavin has long since given up in trying to convince him that his shadow Pokémon don't respond to such things like ordinary Pokémon — then leads the way to the large walk-in hall closet. Temp's likely been inside a few dozen times; it's where Gavin keeps spare bedding and bath towels, cleaning supplies, and all manner of assorted things one might find in a closet not meant for clothing. But Gavin strides right past the shelves with purpose and slides aside the false wall at the back, revealing a staircase that leads down into the earth.

A light switched on at the bottom of the stairs reveals a bright and indeed sterile laboratory with a lot of equipment that Temp might not recognize. The fossil machine is identifiable enough, as it's situated right next to a partially assembled skeleton. Along the other wall is the hydroponic garden, his Leafeon curled up asleep between two of the plants. There are some chambers along the back wall that look as if they might be used for the purposes of safe testing... and in the center of the room, a wide empty space perfect for their purpose.

He sends out the Corviknight, and the dark-feathered avian pins them with its glare. But it doesn't attack, eyes on Gavin as his miasma slowly spreads through the room.

"This one was wild," he explains, "like your Luxray. I don't know where it came from."

Tempest Quinn

Temp follows Cillian Quinn. He's still looking for that giant mirror that totally has been here the whole time. The reality is as disappointing as it is intriguing. Temp came in here almost daily by this point and had never noticed anything off. He looks around as his fiance leads him, leaning down to give the Leafeon a few pets and a treat as they pass by.

"You have dirt and old bones down here. We could totally play sexy doctor and assistant." Temp was already taking a step towards the Corviknight with a treat in hand. Thankfully, he won't need to be saved- for the third time. A half step in, Temp pauses and frowns at the bird, then steps back towards Gavin.

"Wait. This is the one that attacked me those other times."

At least Temp was learning. Just took almost losing his hand a few times.

He would not deny the pokemon a treat, though. Instead of hand delivering, he tosses it to the Pokemon from a safe distance.

"What makes them all... " He motions to the steel type. "like that?"

Gavin's already opened his mouth to call out a warning when Temp recognizes the bird and draws back. Closing his mouth around a sigh of relief, Gavin watches the Corviknight snatch the treat from the air with a vicious lunge.

"That's what those are for." He nods to the chambers at the back of the room. "Before I had Lugia, I had to train them not to go for my throat any time I got near them."

Now, though? Miasma floods the room, and Corviknight pins them with a beady-eyed stare.

"Varies," he answers, shrugging. "This one? I'm not sure. It might be like the Cryogonal. Emma told me it turned weird after coming in contact with something during the Megalopolan invasion. Sandslash was created in one of Rocket's labs before we had to shut down the project." His lips purse in disappointment; he'd never been able to recreate the process. "Several of them were changed by Necrozma, when I fought it in the wormhole."

He sends out his Aerodactyl, its stony hide coated with jutting black crystal.

"You can tell those ones by the spikes. Did the Luxray have any?"

Tempest Quinn

There is another sex joke in there somewhere but Temp is too busy studying the new shadow pokemon to make it. Maybe some other time. Concern does flash over his face but in the end Temp just gives Cillian Quinn a bit of a side eye.

"I am not surprised at all you were in a hidden hole wresting something dangerous." At least Gavin had Lugia to help him now. Silently, Temp does his best to think grateful thoughts at her. She might only yell at him when it's convenient for her but he can still try. Lugia deserves to know that he's glad she doesn't let his very smart, handsome fiance kill himself.

"I remember when they still did that. One of the Techs really wanted me to get some Corsola for her to test on. No idea why. I never did it." The whole process was uncomfortable for him, not to mention the damage it would do the colony. Even if Temp had been interested, the steep fee was too much. It was best to just not think about it.

"Black crystals, though... hmm..." By this point his memory of the Luxray is fuzzy. In the end he shakes his head. "I don't think so. It was more like the Corviknight. It just looked liked a Luxray and acted weird. My only clue was the mist and how weirdly strong it was."

Gavin's canines flash with his smirk.

"No, no, I only started wrestling them after I was chosen."

Because he did wrestle with his shadow Pokémon, now, madman that he was. Psellia was his favourite sparring partner but they all had their unique draws, Lugia most of all. It was less like wrestling with the legend and more like dodging her attacks until he tired and she knocked him on his ass. He was getting better and better with his powers, though, as Temp would learn soon enough when they struggled with the distortion in Petalburg.

No idea why, and the scientist in Gavin is compelled to answer. "The process was often fatal, so those who wanted a specific species would often go through several subjects before the formula took. My Sandslash was the third."

Spoken calmly, as if he weren't discussing the fatality of treasured lives.

"Not of Necrozma, then. Perhaps regular Ultra Beast toxins. I understand that's what caused many of them to change."

Tempest Quinn