Memo looked up at Alex, blaringly white even in the moonlight, waving his little paper fan like a tia chismosa at a football game. The smile that pulled insistently at the corners of his mouth came unbidden, reeling him in like fishing line, and he wanted to crawl across the blanket and kiss him.

But it was too hot for that, he imagined, so he settled for sitting and grinning like an idiot.

“Oh!” It went off like a lightbulb, and he pulled a Pokeball out from underneath a package of freezy-pops in the cooler. He gave it a toss and released his Sealeo, Rollo, out into the humid night air.

“Think you can help us out, buddy?”

The great, blue beastie looked a little pained, but his whiskers twitched as he blasted a sheer cold straight up into the air, spiraling around itself in an icy blue beam. Snowflakes and ice crystals flew off the main column, and the air cooled significantly just in their general area-- without giving them frostbite, which was a plus.

“Thanks, Rollo.” Memo flashed the large pinniped a thumbs up, and Rollo huffed, flopping and bouncing to turn himself around and head out towards the water.

Memo looked at Alex. He reached across the blanket to thread their fingers together. “Better?”

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

Memo looks at him with a doe-eyed innocence. “Yes? He likes it cold.” His gaze shifted to the side, briefly, then went back to Alex. “Am I not supposed to?”

He pushed himself onto his knees and brushed some stray sand off his thighs. “Not all of us have the room to free roam our constituents, Mister Sanctuary Pants,” he said, forcing just enough of a fake-pout into the words to sound petulant and, frankly, adorable.

He leaned back on his palm, still holding Alex's hand, staring over the sea lit by the sunset. “Yeah,” he said, agreeing but not really agreeing, because he hadn’t felt this at peace in quite some time, and he had a sneaking suspicion that, soon, he never would again.

Wasn’t that foreboding?

When Alex mentioned the dome was ruining lots of things, Memo shot him a curious look. “Did you have big summer plans that got put on hold?” he asked. Sometimes he was reminded that he’d only really known Alex for, like, seven months.

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

He nodded, tracing his thumb along the ridge of Alex’s knuckles. He hadn’t even thought about the world outside of his frame of reference-- that being people, mostly. But as he listened to Alex explain things, he realized that the dome had upset the world on a much deeper level than just plane schedules and cross-regional communication.

“I didn’t realize,” he said, not able to help the sadness that colored his tone. It was a lot for Alex to deal with. The man’s heart was entirely too fucking big, and he meant that in the best way possible. Alex felt it was his job to take care of everything under the sun, which was what, Memo imagined, led him to create the sanctuary. He’d been a firsthand witness to the self-flagellation Alex subjected himself to when he felt he failed at the, admittedly impossible, job.

“I can try and help,” he suggested-- because in the same way that Alex took the lives of every living thing as his burden, Memo’s own cross to bear was self-sacrifice. “I’ve been pretty busy but--,” I think I’m going to get the job I wanted died on his lips, because he wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a surprise, or if he was just afraid of telling Alex he might be moving to Fortree, or maybe even because he felt like if he spoke it out loud it wouldn’t happen.

He was, deep down, absolutely terrified that Alex would freak out. The man had asked for time, and Memo could give him all the time in the world. But to immediately say it's okay that you don't want to date right now and rubberband that right into hey, I've been manipulating the system so I can move closer to you... Memo was scared Alex would feel that it was an invasion of privacy.

“--but I think things might be slowing down, now. Amazingly, the closer we get to the Meteor, it’s like everyone is… stopping to take a breath.” He traded his wounded look for one of forced happiness, of a peace he felt wasn’t too far off for him to really reach, not in Alex’s presence. Maybe he just needed to fake it a little.

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

He opened his mouth to answer Alex’s question because, at first, he thought it was how can you help? and he was about to spout some sort of nonsense that fell somewhere between a long list of his skills and features and the very charming, very sexy answer of how would you like me to help? complete with a wink--

--but then Alex exploded in a burst of static interwoven with a long, red thread of panic and Guillermo had to eat his words quicker than a bat flew out of hell. And he was reminded, so very brusquely, that he was dating involved with crushing on hanging out with a bigger downer than a bottle of Xanax and the personified frost power every single ice age collectively happening at once.

But it was true, wasn’t it? Memo was looking through his own little scope-- his personal eyeglasses. I don’t know, I guess I’m just less busy? was a meager excuse for things looking up. But he wasn’t wired like Alex-- he didn’t have the capability to take in all the bad things in the world, grind them down and process them, and spit them back out again as-- as recycled plastic bottles or rubberized children’s play flooring. Keeping his scope narrow was how he survived without gouging his own eyeballs out.

”I… I could help you, I guess, is all I was trying to say.”

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

Thoroughly chastised, Memo wasn’t looking at Alex when the other man realized they’d been holding hands, but he did feel the twitch of his fingers at the small epiphany.

“Yeah, well,” he said, drawn back to the earlier problem of wanting to announce he sorta-maybe got the promotion to the position that would move him closer to Alex-- make them partners in charge of Fortree, basically, kinda-- “I’m in a lull.”

At Alex’s admission that he worries Memo could only laugh.

“I know you do. You worry enough for ten people.”

He squeezed Alex’s hand.

“I know my limits,” he said, which was true, but the part that he left out was that he actively chose to ignore them, “and I would love to help you out around the sanctuary. You’re under a lot of pressure. And, besides, it gives me an excuse to spend more time with you.”

He almost-- almost-- talked too much to miss Alex sneakily sneaking in the someone I care about bit. And he smiled.

“I’ll be fine. Please don’t worry about me. I’d hate to add one more thing to your worry pile.”

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

Memo laughed; it came out both dry and light at the same time. “Only a little bit,” he admitted, feeling very small, indeed, in the face of current events. “It’s all up in the air right now-- no pun intended. Big brass is meeting with the HBIC and we decide where to go from there.” It wasn’t anything Alex wouldn’t know, he imagined.

He fake-pouted at Alex’s reprimanding strike, eyes puppy-dog bright. “But you the most.” Everything could be going one-hundred-percent perfectly and Alex would still have concerns to weigh him down. It was a wonder he got into the air, at all.

He opened his mouth to say that he had, at the very least, an inkling, of how much Alex worried-- about everything, not just the sanctuary-- but then he laughed, for real.

“Okay, I won’t tell you not to worry. But I can take care of myself.”

Mostly.

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉