It takes every ounce of control in Kepler’s body to not run at a dead sprint to Ash’s apartment. He should honestly win a fucking medal. Hand in hand, it’s a quiet, slightly frantic scramble, to the walk, to the door, to the elevator, to the next door.

Kepler thinks he would destroy all the doors in the world.

He doesn’t need to be told twice when Ash tells him to ditch the candy. He drops it on the table with little fanfare, stumbling across the living room as he struggles to kick his shoes off, not entirely sure what he’s excited for, but knowing he’s excited.

He watches Mercury disappear into a room with Ash’s Scorbunny and he freezes for a moment because he hasn’t gone without his bodyguard since--

Ash’s voice startles him out of his stupor before he can do what he normally does, which is think himself to death. He lets himself be guided down on the couch, and sits, rigid, nervous.

“Yes,” he says, and it sounds a little robotic, even to him; but then Ash takes his hat off and says get along little doggy and Kepler is laughing, tension melting from him, the joke serving its purpose. “It was cute, though. But I guess everything has its place.”

He tilts his head, gaze jumping from Ashley’s lips to his chest and then away.

“I would like that. The-- the ‘just the two of us’ thing. But… I have no idea what I’m doing and for all that it seems like I am, I’m really not used to that.” He smiles, apologetic. “I haven’t even had a friend until-- until now.”

Oh, god, was he babbling? He was babbling, wasn’t he. Welp. He was already here.

“Also, we might die in a few weeks and I would really like to not do so a virgin.”

It comes out in a rush.

"S-sorry. That was very forward. I'm an idiot."

Ashley Shepard

☉

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

He has a boyfriend.

And his boyfriend is-- into him?! Hello?! Holy shit?!

His head is spinning and he doesn’t know up from down and the next thing he realizes is Ash is pulling him into his lap, hands around his waist and then sliding along the outside of his hips, thumbs over his midsection.

He’s not a human being anymore. He’s electricity. He’s-- he’s what broke the law of conservation of energy. He has created something new, right here, within himself.

Ash says it’s okay and then they’re kissing again, Kepler tentative and fumbling and Ash sure and confident.

“I’m not scared,” he whispers into the curve of Ash’s mouth, “not with you.”

Ashley Shepard

☉

‘Some time later’ was an apt way to describe the passage of time say, during, a nap, or perhaps, on a grander scale, the mediocre years of middle-agedhood one falls into on the path to death.

Definitely not how Kepler would describe the best night of his life, but then again, he’s a scientist, and the devil is usually in the details.

Kepler doesn’t have a sleep schedule. He works long hours, survives on caffeine and peach-flavored sucrose, crashes when his forehead hits his worktable after another failed experiment. And even this night couldn’t have been long-- they’d been busy for the majority of it-- but he wakes up feeling more refreshed than he has since… ever.

Maybe this was the missing piece? Maybe the secret to great sleep was great sex? Or, you know, just sex, in general, since, he’d never had any before.

There’s a brief moment of discord when Ash leaves the bed where Kepler makes grabby hands at him in a half-awake state before eventually realizing Ash is already up and awake. His consolation prize is sliding into the spot on the bed that was once-- once his boyfriend’s-- and burying his face in the pillows that still smell so strongly of him.

He wakes up quickly after that because the stunning realization sets in that he’s not in his lab and he freezes, like a rabbit, breathing shallowly for a few seconds before his brain re-asserts itself. It’s okay, it’s okay, we’re safe. We’re better than safe.

Pushing the covers back with a stretch and a yawn, he sleepily stomps out to the living space, where he welcomes the soft familiarity of the couch as he crawls like a cat back into Ashley’s lap. “That sounds atrocious,” he says, head on Ash’s chest, content to fall asleep again. Then he realizes what he’s said and his eyes flash open. “I mean, comparatively. To what we did. I mean, to what ours was.” His cheeks spike red as he rolls onto his back to back and scooches up to examine the-- the pocky? Was that what Ash had called this?

“Yeah, it was-- fantastic. That even sounds like a bit of an understatement. It was incredible and I don’t think I’ll ever need another one. First date, I mean.”

Ash kissed the new color rising in his cheeks. Kepler wished he could just say what he meant without sounding utterly ridiculous. Maybe he never had been able to.

“Is this… candy?” he asks, catching Ash’s hand with the pocky stick and examining them closely.

Ashley Shepard

☉

File that under habits he didn’t know he had: Kepler sought Ash’s body heat like a cat, or, perhaps more appropriately, a heat-seeking missile. Nigh on a quarter of a century of touch starvation meets one night of the first positive physical contact he’s ever had and he’s already addicted.

“You’re so warm,” he confesses, as though it’s the simplest thing in the world. Ash threads their fingers together and Kepler is once again in awe at how perfectly they fit: substrate binding into an enzyme, electrons cascading brightly back to ground state.

And maybe he doesn’t know the right things to say, especially when his brain keeps tying itself up into knots (even more so than usual) and his words come out convoluted and akimbo to what he really means. But what he lacks in linguistic talent he makes up for in a sheer inability to control his physical responses; so when Ash says you’re smitten with me his response, instead of saying yeah, duh, is to somehow nestle closer, a proton and its neutron, so intrinsically entwined that the only thing that could pull them apart required enough power to wipe all of Sootopolis off the map.

“Good,” he says into Ash’s collarbones, relief flooding through him at the simple admission because his legs are still shaking through everything that’s gone on and he certainly couldn’t handle the rug being pulled out from underneath him right now: he’d fall and shatter to pieces.

More heat floods his cheeks as Ash explains the pocky traditions to him. He slides one out of the box, other hand still entangled with Ash’s. “If I like it, then, yeah.” Because he is still nothing if not practical.

He takes a bite and considers, for a bit. “It’s not bad. It’s not as sugary as I was expecting.” Any lack of sweetness is quickly stolen away by Ash leaning in for a kiss, and Kepler can’t help but chase his mouth back a bit.

“Or we could just kiss,” he says, rolling over to pursue the topic, “that sounds even better.”

It was absolutely absurd, how dizzy and dreamlike he felt; like he’d been in absolute free-fall for the past twelve hours. Kepler’d never been a big believer in the L-word, but he was certainly feeling… something, that was for sure.

After a bit, he broke away.

“At a minimum,” he confirmed, the thought of leaving filling him with a heavy dread.

Ashley Shepard

☉

Kepler was a walking polar vortex with the vascular power of someone desperately in need of a quadruple bypass. Permanently a block of ice, and pale to match. Ash’s body was like a heating blanket for him-- or maybe it was just the closeness he felt with another person, safe and secure and snuggled up against the world.

He’d never been given the opportunity to be this close with anyone: not a parent, not a nanny, certainly no one in a romantic gesture. Kepler was a brilliant kid who went to a school for other brilliant kids; he wasn’t special, and the only thing he had was just a run-of-the-mill genius-level intellect, just like every one of his classmates.

“Careful,” he cautions, smile big, face flushed, “or else you’ll never get rid of me.”

I’m a parasite, after all.

When Ash asks him to stay-- really stay-- he blinks, batting his long, dark lashes as his mouth contours down in confusion.

“You don’t… really want that,” Kepler says, voice lilting up on a question, “...do you?”

Because it seems impossible. It is, at the very least, highly improbable. That one date and one night could turn into something like this. Ash doesn’t know him very well. He doesn’t know Ashley very well. What if Ash grew to hate him?

Ashley Shepard

☉

Kepler doesn’t know what to say. His eyes go a little hazy, limp as Ash pulls them closer together. His brain is fried. It’s trying to process what has just been professed but can’t.

Ashley maneuvers him into position and locks their eyes again, and Kepler feels like a doll with all its strings cut. But, like, in a good way. In a way that uplifts instead of falls down.

And then they’re kissing again, and it’s like he ignites. His arms come up and wrap around Ash’s neck and shoulders as he orients himself on his boyfriend’s lap, a grand impersonation of how they’d been last night. He’s more sure, now, head tilted so he could take what Ash was giving, the taste of chocolate on his lips. His kiss is his answer. It’s a resounding yes.

He breaks away for just a second to catch his breath, eyes filled with light.

“Because I sound smart?” he parrots, grin wild, lips parted. “I am smart, thank you very much.”

He punctuates his statement with a forward roll of his hips, as though to illustrate his point.

Ashley Shepard
they're going to be degens again

☉

It’s later and they found their way back to bed. There had been multiple stops in between, for various reasons. Kepler is once again half-moon curling over Ash, legs entwined, drawing lazy circles on his boyfriend’s bare chest.

“If-- if I move in,” he says, timidly, like he’s afraid to broach the topic-- because he is, he’s very afraid, he’s terrified Ash will change his mind, take it back, laugh it off in the bell-ringing post nut clarity, “I’ll need to bring some of my equipment with me. I’d still have to work-- to do research-- here and-- I pretty much eat, sleep, and live in my lab.” He quiets for a moment, eyebrows knitting in consternation. “That’s a vast understatement. I do eat, sleep, and live in my lab.”

He pushes himself up onto his forearms to look Ash directly eye-to-eye.

“Up until you my entire life in Hoenn has been for the organization. For Rocket. I’m very, very scared that any drops in productivity will have them looking for probable causes. I don’t want to give them a reason to look. Does that make sense?”

Kepler didn’t exactly know how relationships worked in the normal world, let alone in the Rocket one. Call it anxiety, but he didn’t want to present any excuses, give them any inklings, as to what may be causing problems in his output-- and he certainly didn’t want them offering solutions. He didn’t trust them to not be amenable ones.

Ashley Shepard

☉