He hummed a thoughtful note, head tipping into his palm. What comes to mind first? “Hm.”

Dear mom, dad, & fam: Screw you, I’m not dead! I guess I hope you’re not, either. XOXO, Gossip Memo.

“I’ll… workshop it,” he said, instead.

He heaves a sigh because once again, Alex is correct. “I used to be better at… managing my internalized things,” he protests, knees to his chest, hugging them close, like a small child trying to disappear.

“I don’t know, I-- I just feel like I used to be a completely different person. When I came to Hoenn, I thought I had finally changed. I was brave and-- and chill and happy and now I’m just. Tired and sad, again.” He snorted a little laugh and buried his face in the seam of his knees. “And pathetic. Sorry.”

Alexei Ivanov
autumn's ominous wind

☉

“Oh, yeah, I remember.” The image of Jove taking a chunk out of Alex’s pantleg flashed in his mind and he, too, dissolved into giggles, forgetting about the lurking pumpkin stench for a second.

“It would be funny though. Maybe we can get him to hold still long enough to weave some of that fake spiderweb stuff through his horns… then he can just stand there and look grumpy and be a natural Halloween decoration.”

He looked his boyfriend affectionately up and down.

“Yeah, it must suck being tall,” he said, the sarcasm heavy in his voice, sardonic smile curling up one corner of his mouth.

Another big chunk of pumpkin viscera was scooped out and flung into the bowl.

“If you want you can start on yours. I’m… going noseblind, I think, so I’ll be okay.” And the gloves protected his hands from most of the blech.

Alexei Ivanov
the guillermo/ceej anti pumpkin carving experience is REAL
tricking or treating

☉

It was… an event, that was for sure. Stuck somewhere between end-of-the-world chaos and people trying to pretend like the apocalypse wasn’t happening imminently. People were nice, but they were either too crazy, or too sad.

There had been more crying than he’d imagined for a Halloween shindig.

More importantly, though, he’d made it through, and he hadn’t smudged his eyeliner, by some miracle of god.

“I think they were mostly just scared,” he said, rubbing at a sore spot where his stupid ear headband was biting into his skull. “It makes people say and do stupid things.” Like be a jerk at an armageddon Halloween party, apparently.

He caught his boyfriend by the hand just before the bedroom and laced their fingers together, tugging him close as he shut and locked the door behind them.

“I had some ideas on how to better spend the night, anyway.”

Alexei Ivanov
this song has been stuck in my head since this mission came around
gay gay homosexual gay

☉

Memo opened his mouth to speak, comb frozen in the air. Closed it again, frowning.

“I’m just-- not used to it. Having someone to let in.” He poured a small amount of detangler in his palm and rubbed the pick end of the comb through it, thinking. “Sorry.”

Singling out a front section, he began to work it apart, flattening it with his fingers before picking at it.

“It’s-- different,” he said, the words coming out between two strong pulls with the comb, “when your hair is tied to your culture, I think.” When you’re raised with the pinnacle of beauty being fair-skinned and, if not straight haired, then at least having hair that does more than two things.

“I like your hair. It’s very-- pretty.” His words caught on another knot.

Alexei Ivanov

His head cocks almost imperceptibly, listening as Alex explains what he means. Memo sighs, the constriction in his chest relenting, if only slightly. “Yeah.”

How many times had he thought that very same thing over the last few weeks? Ever since that stupid cyberspace debacle. Ever since he watched Alex die.

It had affected him more than he cared to admit. To the point where he didn’t even know who he was anymore.

He slowly laid back against the pillows, head tilted, looking off to the side of the room.

“When we were in… that place,” he said, voice quiet in the night, “I… got cut off from all my positive emotions, feelings. The happiness, the compassion. Everything that made me… me.” He swallowed against the emotion that choked his throat, the tears that threatened to spill. “It… it was awful. The fact that I was completely out of character was bad enough but having to… it’s hard to explain.”

And it was, in a way, something that no one else but himself would ever be able to grasp. Being rewritten at your base level and spat back out as something-- someone-- unrecognizable, even to yourself.

“I think… that changed me. Not for the better.”

He looks up at Alex, wet-eyed. Is this what you wanted? he wants to ask. What a mess of a baby I've become?

"I couldn't live with myself if I lost you."

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

“Go ahead,” he said, amazed at how much more relaxed he felt in Alex’s presence. Like a puzzle that had finally found its missing piece.

"Well. Neither of us has to be lonely anymore."

He shivered at Alex’s touch, sighing peaceably into the dark.

“Yeah. I’m terrified, actually.” It was an odd thing, being honest about what he felt. Especially when it was a negative emotion. "What about you?"

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

Memo turned away and frowned into the dark. He really, really didn’t like the reminder of all the near death experiences Alex had been through, especially at the hands of ultra beasts.

it was always a shock to remember that for all his softness alex had seen lots of terrible, active combat. more so than anyone should have ever seen.

“well, then he has my eternal gratitude.” he squeezed alex’s hands and pushed on into the dark, cradling frollo to his chest still.

cora fell into step beside them, ruffing affectionately at alex’s memorandum of never pissing her off.

Memo couldn’t help but laugh when Alex defended his capture of the Sandygast.

“Whatever you say, dear. WILL!” He waved away a Drifloon that bounced off a tree branch and deflated like a popped balloon. Memo finagled Frollo to the crook of his arm and fished out a Pokeball.

“Willllllll!”

Alexei Ivanov
ghost/psychic
catch attempt drifloon

☉

He laughs, sudden and unexpected. He certainly hadn’t meant to.

"I meant Sinistea,” he said, still chuckling, “but the expression holds true, too.”

he’d been so detached from his home region, his lineage, that he’d forgotten the simple details.

"i haven’t been back to galar in…. seven years?”

he didn’t even have an accent much, anymore.

oli took the opportunity to zap down a beautifly. it went down in a flurry of fragile wings. memo zapped it with a pokeball before it hit the water.

---

catch attempt beautifly. water/flying/dragon

Remiel Calcifet

☉

“It’s called fashion,” he quietly calls in Alex’s wake as the man disappears from his doorway and returns with more pillows and blankets than six people needed.

Memo took the proffered comfort items and arranged them in a neat, overlapping pattern.

“For someone who likes it chilly you sure sleep with a lot of stuff.”

The blanket went last, splayed out over top to cover them. He peeled back the covers and then flipped them up when Alex was comfortably inside.

“If anyone is sleeping tonight, they’re either crazy, or oblivious,” he said with a quiet laugh, snuggling down into the softness surrounding them, cheek on Alex’s chest.

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

“It’s not a trick,” he says, a harsh and horrible laugh, mirthless and dry, “it’s the truth. I wish it was a trick because then it wouldn’t be real.”

Alex doesn’t relent. Keeps pulling him closer. Memo doesn’t want to hurt him so he doesn’t go forward, doesn’t repel… just freezes.

He opens his mouth to expunge, to explain more-- closes it again, feeling pathetic. Alex doesn’t deserve to be broadsided with his emotions in the face of his own shortcomings. Alex doesn’t deserve to be weighed down by him and he doesn’t deserve Alex.

“...I wish I could make you fine,” he says, instead, still frozen, half-up and half-down, tired and wired and feeling like if he squeezed his eyes shut hard enough he could blip out of existence, up beyond the clouds and out to the star-dust of space where there’s not an atmosphere and things don’t matter.

“I wish I could make everything fine.” But that sounds pathetic again and tears prick at his eyelids.

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