“No, no, I’m-- fine,” he said, waving away the idea as though it were a bad smell. He was, sort of, kind of, fine. More fine that he had been in a minute.

Maybe Alex was right and there was something to this whole ‘facing your problems head on’ thing than Memo had thought.

But it was still exhausting.

“I just wonder sometimes where I’d be if I’d stayed, you know? Not here, obviously. Not nearly as happy.” He smiled then-- small, but genuine.

“You make me happy.”

Alexei Ivanov
autumn's ominous wind

☉

Memo was still holding onto Alex’s forearm with a vicegrip. Squeezing hard enough to feel the tendons shifting beneath his phalanges.

He relaxed his grip a little and slid his hand down to mesh their palms together lightly. Still holding fast. One hand lifted in a weak wave as Gabe gave him a dragon glare before figuring, Memo assumed, he wasn’t about to try anything fresh with his trainer and lifting off to go find the girls.

“I hope they’re okay,” he said, sounding completely wiped but, somehow, more like himself than the last few weeks, “Kaida Adachi can’t kill me if she’s dead.”

Humming a note of agreement, he brought forth a healed Sibella, calling back a rather miffed Freya who hadn’t quite gotten the fight she wanted. The bat-dragon chirped affectionately, then froze, like something was amiss-- she chirped again, louder, before breaking off in a stream of frantic half-screeches as she flailed her wings.

“Hey, hey, baby girl, what’s wrong?” Memo reached up to take her head in his hands (letting go of Alex, amazingly) and trying to hold her steady. She rapidly pinned and flared her ears, clawing at them with her three-toed hands, shrieks becoming louder and louder until Memo was wincing.

“You… your ears?” he tried, getting a word in edgewise-- though it didn’t do anything. Sibella was still panicking. Her claws raked across the skin of Memo’s forearm as he struggled to bring her to heel, finally pressing his forehead to hers.

She froze. Her breathing slowed.

“‘Bella,” he said, slow, steady, “Take. Us. home. Can you do that? Then we can figure this out?”

She blinked at him.

“Home,” he reiterated. After a few seconds she nodded and chirped (too loudly for their proximity, but it was, at least, an affirmation.)

Sibella turned her body so Memo and Alex could climb aboard-- though the former wondered how his Noivern would fly, seemingly deafened.

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” he said to Alex, as he held out his hand.

He hadn’t really… won, any of his battles. He still had this horrible, gnawing feeling of disappointment, of failure-- but, he and Alex had both survived. All of his Pokemon had survived-- mostly-- intact. He had managed to mega-evolve Shivani, for better or worse. And they’d freed Dialga, protected the Primal Point, and stopped the meteor.

Not a total loss…

“Though I’m not sure if we’ll be getting that vacation anytime soon.”

---

Tl;DR
Alexei Ivanov
baby tag for Kaida Adachi Julia Davis
swaps lucario for noivern
dialga's roar of time deafened sibella wamp waaahhhh
advent calendar get
marceliño out

☉

Alex’s frankness startled a laugh out of him, and he turned his head and hid his face in his boyfriend’s chest as the giggles drew to a stop.

“There’s not much else we can do,” he said, exhaling measuredly, “except face it. It’s not really something we can change, at present.”

Alex’s question made him him a thoughtful note, thumb tracing along the line of the other man’s collarbone.

“There’s no one I would rather spend it with,” he said, quiet and full of meaning. “And if we do die tomorrow I… thank you, for making me so happy.”

He was a bleeding heart at his core, so sue him.

[attr="class","mintag"] Alexei Ivanov

He chuckled at the gentle bullying, the insistance that he needed to open up his mind to the prospect of being cared for. It was the easiest thing he had ever welcomed into his life. “I’ll try, honey,” he said, freeing a coil of hair that bounced almost vertical and stayed there, “but I don’t want to take you for granted.”

Eyes narrowing, he squinted into the vanity mirror, trying to see what Alex was talking about.

“I hadn’t. You’re turning into a silver fox on me, now, huh?” Alex’s hair could be green with pink polka dots. He still fucking loved it.

Alexei Ivanov

“Then some people are going to be s-o-l,” Memo said, reaching up to cup Alex’s face and draw him in for a kiss, “and I get to continue to be the luckiest person on the planet.”

He went were lead, breaking off contact with a tilt of his head. He was immediately excited. And suspicious.

“Sure, okay…” he turned and sat, one eyebrow raised, head tilted, “why?”

Alexei Ivanov
TIME TO WATCH MEMO DIE IN REAL TIME!

☉

Memo cracked a smile at Alex’s trepidation. “It’s fine, baby. It’s just a pumpkin. I can go buy another.” He scooped at the pale orange flesh to hollow it out a little more. “Or if it’s a little goofy… who cares. We can have a little goofy Halloween.”

Once his gourd was excavated enough, he stripped the gloves into the garbage and washed his hands all the way up his forearms with a healthy heaping of fragrant soap (still in a summer scent).

“Um. Yay, pumpkin pie?” he said with a wince as he pulled up a chair and uncapped a sharpie, swiping on his phone for a good Noivern pumpkin template to copy.

Alexei Ivanov
tricking or treating

☉

“Do you really think that?” Memo asked, suddenly, latching onto a particular thread that Alex seemed to always carry and tugging. “That everything happens for a reason?”

It was scary, to think. That everything was pre-planned. That there was no changing the future. That he was destined to make all the mistakes he was going to make whether he became a better person or not.

Sometimes it wasn’t as terrifying. He’d gotten kicked out of his home for a reason, wandered the world for a reason, suffered at his own hands for a reason: to find Alex.

But other times it was terrifying.

Alexei Ivanov
autumn's ominous wind

☉

Oh, right. Alex had a big hole in his memory. Timed with the loss of his eyes and his freaking heart.

“The-- the third scan, I think. Took something from everyone. From me it took everything positive. From you, it took your eyes.”

He swallowed, remembering. Remembering how much Alex had needed him in that exact moment and the only thing he could do was be angry that Alex didn’t remember him. Feel mad at how useless the newly blind man was.

Barely touching the memory made nausea spike in him and he clapped his hands over his eyes to stop the world from spinning.

“If I think about it too much, I’ll puke,” he confessed. “But… it was me. Physically. But emotionally I was… different. Awful. Horrible.”

[attr="class","mintag"] Alexei Ivanov