He somehow manages to dodge all the meteors, but he eats mad shit, landing awkwardly and hitting his face in the ash. There’s a wet gush of blood and he can tell his nose is broken, great. This is all so bothersome.

Guillermo pushes himself, shakily, to his knees, as destruction continues to rain down around them. He wipes blood on the back of his hand, turning to look back the way he came, just to watch Alex’s Salamence get eighty-sixed-- and Zuza, soon after.

His chest constricts. It’s an odd feeling, loss, when there’s no heat to it. Again he gets the feeling that something in his brain isn’t connecting, touching. He’s just angry.

A blip, and everything resets-- again. So stupid, so foolish. What’s the point to any of this?

He looks up at the asshole with the fancy blue hair and all he feels is rage. He’s still on his knees, blood pouring down the front of his face; the vertigo of the rising platform doesn’t assist in him getting to his feet. Then the crackpot on the screen asks for sacrifices; because, of course he does.

Memo is angry, but he’s also-- something else. When you’re someone who is normally full of love, empathy, and generosity, and then it’s all cut, snipped, a spacious void, there’s only a few emotions left. Anger is one of them.

But so is a horrific, overwhelming sadness; a soul-sucking mire of depression. Because-- and he’d told Alex this, that first (second) night they’d spent together (they’d been together, remember, Guillermo)-- he’d been in a bad place.

Meeting you saved my life.

He struggles to his feet, breathing heavy.

And makes his way to a mark.

Not because it’s the right thing. Not because he’s sacrificing himself. Not even because Alex did it (he’d watched, and felt that squeeze in his chest, the one that told him something wasn’t quite right).

No, he did it because it was the easiest way to die. A tool, a means to an end; freedom from this life without love, empathy, where all he felt was rage and sadness.

Kaida wouldn’t be able to hand off Alex’s parting gift because there will be no Guillermo to receive it.

(And had he been in his right mind-- well, he never would’ve let Alex sacrifice himself to begin with, but this is how he would’ve preferred it. There’s no one without the other, not anymore.)

He steps into the light, locks eyes with his duplicate.

“Yeah, fuck you, bud.”

en0hW8fs

t l ; d r
- memo is a coward and blue pills it
- chooses to stay and be deleted vs. continue to suffer and be miserable

Alexei Ivanov Kaida Adachi

☉

He nodded, unable to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Yeah, both Sénon AND Lars had freaked out about that part, too. They’d grilled him on it multiple times. “Yeah, yeah. Xerneas, huzzah.”

Memo pretty much thought if he ever met the stupid deer in real life he’d just punch it in the face.

Shrugging, he tried to remember. “I don’t recall much else outside of the flaming cage of fire. There was a lot going on.”

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

He was entirely too self-satisfied to reply-- just sat back on his heels and moved over to Alex’s right side. Thumbs, fingerprints, heel of the hand. Find the spot under the right shoulderblade, though it’s less a knot, now, and more a well-worked nerve. Plant his hand on the other side of Alex’s head, nuzzle into the skin on his neck, his shoulder.

“Not in any way that’s ever mattered,” he says, voice intended to be a purr-- and it comes out as one, more or less. He sits up again, thumbs to spine; fingerprints, heel of the hand.

“Has anyone ever told you that you make such incredible noises?”

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

☉

Yeah... yeah, he was blushing. He was red all the way from his cheeks down his neck-- he could tell by the vibrato heat strumming throughout his body. But it wasn’t nearly as adorable on him as it was on Alex. So when Alex perks up on one elbow and looks at him all he can do is shrug and give a single, half-hearted nod.

And he’s fully expecting a scolding, at the worst, or at the very least a simple explanation of boundaries and lines they shouldn’t cross-- or, in Alex’s case, lines they weren’t ready to cross. And he’s fully expecting them to pack it all in and each go their separate ways, in which case Guillermo needs an urgent date with a cold shower.

The silence stretches for eons when it really only could have been, like, twenty seconds.

And then Memo is sure-- 100%, completely-- that he’s died. For real this time, he’s died. He looks up just in time to catch Alex’s wink and the sound he made was definitely the sound of his soul leaving his body.

“I--,”

He cocks his head, wets his lips.

“Better keep working on that problem spot, then.”

Common sense-- not to mention common decency-- thrown to the wind, he plants one knee on either side of Alex’s hips-- when he sits back he’s resting on his own heels and not Alex’s legs-- and, after making sure Alex is laying flat so as not to injure him, he simply goes back to what he was doing, thumbprints on each side of the head of Alex’s spine.

It’s different now, though, because he doesn’t have to worry about his own little gasps or the way he chews on his bottom lip to stop from moaning. Fingertips press down and around Alex’s left scapula, his shoulder blade; it’s different now, too, because he doesn’t stop himself from setting one hand in the space beside Alex’s head and leaning down so he can nuzzle into the hair at the nape of his neck; it’s different, now, as he presses gentle, soft kisses to the side of his spine, in the crook where jaw meets throat, and along one shoulder.

It’s different because this is all he wanted, he thinks, teeth working Alex’s coconut-flavored skin; he applies a little pressure and lets it loose with the quietest pop, kissing the faint red mark he’s left there in the shape of his teeth.

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

☉

Memo laughs. “Well, no. But-- the thing about my family, especially my mother’s family, is we don’t always stay in contact. But the baby-- that’s a big thing, right? So that’s why he reached out to me.” His mother’s side of the family had multiple branches and outlets and looked like a very confusing roadmap on paper (he’d had to do a family tree once for primary school).

“So we got to talking and--,” and, he assumed, his mother had told Sénon that Guillermo had been promptly and thoroughly cut off, for being a wicked, homosexual, degenerate (or something of the sort)-- “he said that he heard that I was kind of… on my own and if I needed a job I should go to Hoenn and enlist. So I did.”

And it was turning out to be the best thing he’d ever done.

“Yeah, it was a whole thing. Xerneas was there. I got stuck in a-- cage of fire, basically.” He helped himself to a cold drink, skin crawling as it remembered the feeling of the flames. “I was pretty much useless, me and my three Pokemon plus Shivani. Did fuck all.” He shrugged. “It was an interesting introduction to the region.”

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

Oh my god.

“Oh my god.”

He wanted to die. 100%, he was going to die. Why did Alex’s hearing stop working as soon as he was going to say something really stupid and/or important?!

Guillermo buried his blushing face in his hands and wanted to pretend, just for a moment, that everything was fine, that he was capable of being a well-adjusted member of society, and that he wasn’t a salacious, creepy reprobate. But no amount of pretending would make the situation go away, and Alex had asked him a question.

A chance to renege? To rephrase? To find another excuse?

No, no time. Just say it.

“Fuck.”

Just say it, you coward.

“I-- fucking… got too turned on giving you a massage, like a freak, and now I need to take a break or-- or things will escalate.” He slumped, on his knees, pouting, but free of the weight that had been riding on his shoulders since this whole freakin’ sunblock escapade started. "I just-- I think you're really hot and, um. You're always very dressed? And it's probably weird. Sorry."

Way to ruin the day, bud.

Alexei Ivanov

☉

He leans embarrassingly into the cold contact at his forehead while he tries to get his swimming thoughts in order. There had to be a happy medium-- just enough information given to satiate Alex’s curiosity without being like well, sweetheart, for a while I sucked dick for food money.

“I did go to Alola. It was actually the last place I went before I came here.” He swallowed, mouth dry. “I was doing… community service work, sort of? And living at a hostel.” There, that didn’t sound too bad. It was a very nice spin on homelessness and scrounging up scraps on the beach for pennies.

“I was in sort of a bad spot and then Sénon texted me about-- about Cait and the baby and, hey, cousin, I hear you’re down on your luck, come to Hoenn, we always need able hands. Then I got here, Littleroot was literally on fire the next day, and the rest is history.”

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉