The words were barely out of his mouth before Alex put the eighty-six on it, complete with a chastising arm slap and, oh boy, Guillermo was going to have to get used to this having someone care if you live or die thing.

And of course he stupidly just said, “Well, yeah,” as though that explained everything. “I mean--,” he was flailing a little bit because while he’d expected Alex to not be happy with his plan he hadn’t expected him to outright decline it. So, yeah, he was a little thrown.

“Sibella does,” he said, touching the Noivern’s Pokeball a little unconsciously. “But-- will they be okay on their own?”

See, he was fine with sacrificing himself, but not his friends.

Alexei Ivanov

☉

Memo frowned. “Another tree? Ugh. Littleroot has too many weird fucking trees.” He snagged an icecream bar from the cooler (before Alex could Gulpin them all down) and schucked the packaging, folding the sticky side down as he slid the chocolate-glazed sweet between his lips. “Yeah, wild pretty much describes it.”

He laughed. “Is your AC ever not on full blast?” he asked, genuinely curious. “We don’t really have AC in Galar. And also, I’m half Paldean. The heat is in my blood.”

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

Memo’s ocean of emotions dried up immediately, replaced with the frigid cold of fear, as he watched that little spindle of red slip down the pale of Alex’s skin, a horrible bloom of color leaking from the corner of his mouth.

“Shid.”

Zuza is at their side in a second, dropping waves of heal pulse over Alex as Memo enlists Kaida’s help. Through his clogged nose, he says “We hab to-- help me get him on d’ dragon. We hab to get him to a hobspital. Now.”

Whether she helps or not, Zuza switches gears from heal pulse to Psychic, enveloping Alex in a pink glow to raise him off the ground and place him gently on his Salamence.

Memo is at a crossroads, because Gabe can fly faster with only Alex aboard, but he doesn’t trust Alex’s ability to not fall off midair. So he clambers aboard, physically securing Alex’s arms around his waist, letting the man lean most of his weight on him.

“You can b’mad ad me lader,” he says to Gabriel, “but ride now we hab to take care of him. Fly fasd ad fly eben.” He instructs, absorbing Zuza back into her Pokeball.

He’s still afraid, but gone is the hesitancy, the petrification. Now he knows he has to act.

t l ; d r
- hospital episode

Alexei Ivanov Kaida Adachi

☉

“I suppose that’s true,” Memo allows with a tip of his head. He supposed it would be more obvious to someone like Remiel, who studied the past. “I guess they do say history repeats itself.” Though who, exactly, they were was a question Memo figured even Remiel couldn’t answer.

The shiny Floatzel leaped clear of the water, angry shiny Kingdra looming behind it. Hydra catches the golden weasel up in a sniper-like hydro pump, and though the attack itself isn’t very effective, the momentum of it knocks the Floatzel down, sending it rolling across the ground. Guillermo bounces a Pokeball off its head as it sits up, dizzy. A golden weasel to go with my golden fish..

“Yep. Musician. Just like everyone else in Spikemuth.” He shrugged. “I did production, mostly. Beats. Wrote songs. The boring stuff.”

---

catch attempt floatzel. water/flying/dragon

Remiel Calcifet

☉

Stripped of his compassion, Memo could only stare into an eternity of sadness, anger, longing, and loneliness. Stripped of his empathy, he had a selfish focus on a future devoid of love, every interpreted hurt festering against his heart like being strung through with a live wire.

“How could you forget about me!” he yells, knowing that it isn’t really Alex’s fault and lacking the part of himself that could force him to care. He distantly registered Kaida as coming closer to them, even after he’d told her to stay the fuck away, but he doesn’t realize what she’s doing until her Ekans is fucking biting him and he yelps in pain, the snake sinking its fangs into his bicep and throwing a coil over his shoulders in a vicious squeeze. “No! Leave me alone!” It was a breathless squeak, because the air was being crushed out of him.

Petulant and childish, to the very end.

Suffocated, his vision began to warp, and Alex’s voice sounded very distant and far away-- then the rant changed, and he felt hands on his face, pulling him in and kissing him, and he was crying like an imbecile, and he still had this stupid snake around him, and he was afraid.

“What if I can’t?” he asked, voice hoarse, “Alex, what if I can’t?!”

But it was too late because the feather went off and Kaida’s snake spins him and Memo falls on his ass and his last sight is Kaida’s angry face as she tries to hell her Ekans to kill him.

------------

Guillermo sits up in a rush, heart squeezing, lungs pumping wildly; the world spins and he feels sick to his stomach, the ghost of pain in his nose and arm, feeling constricted. Dizzy, he puts his head between his knees--

--a gentle muzzle ruffles through his hair, Zuza’s pink lemonade rings of heal pulse falling over him like a child’s game of ring toss. “Z-zuzu?” he asks, voice cracked and hoarse (ha, ha), as he reaches behind him, coming up onto his knees to wrap her head in his arms, face wet with tears as he cries into her mane. “I thought-- I--,” his voice breaks, and Zuza helps him to his shaky feet, as everything crashes back into him like a wave that threatens to knock him over again.

“Alex!”

The word tears from him on a painful gasp, and as he starts to look for Fortree’s gym leader, he sees Kaida stomping towards him. “Kaida!” He says, taking two steps in her direction, arms hovering out. “Are you okay? Are you hur--,”

His concern is cut off as her fist drives into his face. His whole skull echoes with a noise like a plastic bag crinkling as his nose really does break, this time, not just cyber-breaking. To his credit, he doesn’t go down, but he does grab his face, taste the hot iron of blood on his lips.

“Yeah, I-- d’ank you, for d’att,” he said, and meant it, voice coming out chunky from the swelling impeding his nostrils. Zuza whickers in the horse version of a laugh. A black shape floats in front of him and he thinks, for a moment, he’s about to pass out, but it’s just--

“Shivani!” he shouts, though it comes out more like Chobani! Because his nose is fucked up, and he wraps his Banette in a hug and he really does sob this time. Holding the little marionette close to his chest, he crosses the beach to where Kaida has found Alex (Shivani wiggles free of Memo’s grip and slips back into her Pokeball) and falls to his knees in the sand. He’s crying, his face a mess of blood and tears, and he’s really trying not to be pathetic, but he burns those beautiful lavender eyes into his brain and reaches out a hand (the one not covered in blood) to hesitantly touch Alex’s shoulder because he doesn’t really deserve this anymore and he also can hardly believe it’s real.

“I’m-- I’m so sorry,” he whispers (I’m tho thorry), stomach quaking, and he feels like he’s about to come to pieces right there in the sand.

“I love you.”

There's much more he wants to say, of course, but he's bleeding profusely from his nose and, like, two seconds away from either vomiting, or openly weeping, or both.

t l ; d r
- memo's nose breaks
- real sadboi times

Alexei Ivanov Kaida Adachi

☉

Okay, that settled it. They needed to get somewhere decidedly less public before Memo had even more trouble keeping his hands to himself.

“I know it’s not your preferred place,” he said, forcing his voice to have some modicum of steadiness and heft, and not come out half-moaned, “but my apartment-- is really close by.”

He’d leave the kids here. He let them come to the beach by themselves all the time. Between Atalys and Smokey, they’d be safe.

“If you’re… interested,” he added, with a tweak of his thumbs into the sensitive spots under Alex’s shoulderblade.

Alexei Ivanov
not us cruising towards more proboards tos throat punches.

☉