“It’s kind of a big thing,” Memo said, voice muffled from where his cheek was pressed into Alex’s shoulder. For all it had kind of come and gone, Smokey’s wandering eye would always be a big thing, for him. He valued loyalty above a lot of other shit, and when it came down to choosing between Will’s weirdness and Smokey’s potential for unfaithfulness, he’d go with Will any day of the week.

“I know that, you goof,” he snickered, “but I wanna know more about… you know, your people. Your friends. The people you hung out with before you started spending all your time with me.” He punctuates this last sentence with a wink and a grin, the tone a fake sort of haughty to hint at the joke.

He hadn’t been here for the explosion at the Slateport-- the Ultra Beast attack that caused so much damage, hurt so many. He’d still been listlessly wandering faraway lands, surviving on dumpster diving and--

--sometimes he didn’t know if it was actually worse than what had been happening in Hoenn.

“She sounds nice.”

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

“Aw, for all your complaining, you love him,” Memo said, laughing at the exasperation rolling off of Alex in waves. “Will brought us together, you know.” Will and Smokey and the little Wooloo, all images on Alex’s phone, just like they were doing now.

Memo set his cheek against Alex’s shoulder. “Smokey had a child with someone else. He has absolutely no room to talk.” And that was a point he would never concede, not on his life. He was, for all intents and purposes, permanently in Will’s corner.

“Who is Ruby Walker?” he aked, tilting his head to look up at Alex, tone curious. He liked finding out about Alex’s friends-- his pre-Memo life-- but he also sometimes dreaded it. Like he was still waiting for Alex’s Seven Evil Exes to pop up and duel him in the street.

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

Alex runs a soft hand over the line of his shoulder and Memo forces himself to exhale. He really, really, really did not like this sort of hands off op, he was coming to find. He leans into the touch, only slightly, eyes still watching the bursts of flame where Gabe and Sibella are working their magic.

The next thing Alex says has him frowning, and he turns to look at the other man with a curious look. “Yeah, how are you not worried? Mr. ‘I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders at all times?'” Because it was kind of funny, that out of all the times that Alex wouldn’t be an anxious wreck was when Memo was.

Praxidike takes to the hair, hovering for a moment, before diving down, eyes scanning the various hallway openings, searching for her-- the other queen. She’s about two seconds from bashing everything down around her when a well-aimed poison sting shoots through the air in front of her face, missing her mandibles by inches. She turns in the direction of the projectile and watches as the giant, Primal Energy infused Queen unfurls from across the cavern, huge, at least twice as tall as Praxidike, with glowering red eyes.

Her golden mandibles snap snap as she twists her massive body and launches another poison sting.

Sibella lands briefly on the side of the hive, forcing a burst of fire down a hallway to smoke out any lingering bees.

Well, I wouldn’t suggest eating these bees, she says with a haughty sniff, launching into the air again. She does a loop around him. Gabriel, what, exactly, do you think Combee are made of? She asks, lashing her tail and cracking one out of the sky, crushing it against the side of the hive.

There’s a sudden uptick in activity where the Combee switch from attacking to defending, beginning to whirl back towards the hive. Sibella tries to head them off with more fire, lighting the side of the hive up like paper. Superheated honey explodes and spits, like bacon fat.

Alexei Ivanov

☉

“I guess that’s true,” Memo said with a shrug, peering in closer at Alex’s phone. “My sisters are just… very chaotic. I got absorbed into a lot of their stuff. At least until Leo was born.” He rolls his eyes.

A bark of laughter escapes him at the picture of Will being quote-unquote a gigachad.

“It’s-- it’s a psychedelic, so, generally, they enhance your mood?” He shrugged again, trying to remember what his experience had been like. “So if you’re planning on being crazy and unruly anyway they tend to just make it worse. I think I just got the giggles. It was actually kind of fun. Tasted awful, though."

That he definitely remembers-- like bitter dirt.

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

Memo had always been a dreamer, literally and figuratively. It was part of what made him, him-- the essence of hoping and dreaming and believing that things will get, become, be better. As a young child, he’d had so many emotions that couldn’t be expressed; they came out in his dreams.

During his transient years, he never really slept deep enough to dream. Then he’d come to Hoenn, re-entered into a modicum of stability, and like long lost friends, they’d returned, vibrant and colorful and full of music.

Then, Maldacena. Cyberspace hell. A detachment from his emotions and literally having to watch the only person he’s ever really loved forget about him, and then die. A compact burst of sadness, depression, and hopelessness, hypodermically injected straight into his brain, leaving cobwebs that won’t quite clear, even in the bright light of day, let alone at night.

His Slateport apartment may have been crappy, but it was his-- the first thing that ever really was. And he was used to the solitude and the way he could experience his emotions, alone, in a controlled environment and manageable space.

But now he lived with Alex. And it was, frankly, amazing-- the concept of the person he loved the most just a few feet away, accessible, present, safe, like drawing water out of a tap, refreshing and sustaining his soul.

He wasn’t alone anymore. He couldn’t casually fall against the wall of his bedroom and cry for no discernable reason. He couldn’t suffer through his nightmares and wake up alone and pretend like they hadn’t happened. And he was trying so hard to be fine, to be normal. A, because he didn’t want Alex to worry more than he was already predisposed to doing, and B, because it was intrinsically part of him that he let nothing get him down.

That was part of what made him, him. Believing that things will get, become, be better. Remember?

The emotions needed an outlet.

So he worked. He ate little, mostly only when Alex was looking. He closed his bedroom door and laid in bed and presented a facade of sleep.

But, eventually, he dreamed.

They took many forms. Usually ones where Alex died in various, gruesome ways. Some where Memo killed him, himself.

This one was particularly gnarly, dark in its vibrancy, Alex dangling from a noose made of Unown, for Arceus’ sake, but when Memo tried to reach for the rope they became blackened thorns, and no matter how he pulled or ripped or tugged they did little but cut his hands and continue to choke the life out of the man he loved.

He had a distant feeling of crying, registered vaguely that he would wake up with tears on his cheeks, and that thought tried to multiply into it’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.. But the fear and desolation was so strong and vivid that it smothered any chance he had of rationalizing, or waking. With desperate fingers he tried to pull at the ring of thorns around Alex’s throat and his fingers, wet with their combined blood, slipped free.

In the physical world, his hand cracked against the head of the bed, loud and distinct.

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

Buoyed by Kyouya’s tailwind, Praxidike zoomed through the hive, a queen on a mission. Moving mostly on instinct, following the scent of the rival queen, she had to focus to keep a level head. Every one of her biological markers was screaming at her to run away, mixing with the thrill of the fight and inherent queen aggression, making for a volatile cocktail of fight-or-flight.

Kyouya’s voice makes her lash out and decimate a section of comb, sending sticky fragments sliding across the floor of the hive hall.

Shut. Up.

Sibella was using her body to funnel the Combee into Gabe’s Flamethrower, flying in intricate spirals around them, turning them into a tornado of bees. If any part of the mass would shift out of order, she’d flambe them herself.

They have a lovely crunch, she trilled over the sound of buzzing and fire, having the time of her life, and they are very sweet. You should try one, sometime.

Praxidike pulled to a sudden stop. The hall they were in opened into a wide, central cavern, filled with floor-to-ceiling comb like structures of other halls.

This is it, she said, scanning for the queen. She’s in here somewhere.

---------

Memo physically jumps when Alex nudges him, so focused on worrying that he’s zoned out for a minute.

“I-- don’t want to jinx it,” he said, rubbing sheepishly at his tricep. “I really, really don’t.”

Alexei Ivanov

☉