Memo’s eyes fell to Alex, landing like a ton of bricks.

“Trust me,” he said, “I never forget that you’re here.”

No, the problem was much the opposite, in fact. He literally could not stop thinking about Alex. Being with him-- spending time with him-- was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him.

He was just a lovesick fool.

And then Alex asked him to put sunblock on his back and his whole brain just crashed. Memo.exe has stopped working. His mouth went dry; he was staring, and he realized it at the same time as he remembered how to move his jaw, and his teeth closed together with a clack.

“I--,” he tried, swallowing his tongue. Oh god. Oh, god. Okay, act cool, act cool.

“Y-,”

Far too late to act cool. Brain straight down the gutter, an iridescent marble of indecency. Far too late to grab that train of thought and haul it back into normal land; a simple act of platonic care that he’s taken and tangled into a knot. Because it is a perfectly normal request, but it’s-- it’s the intimacy of the thing. The trust.

The proximity to bare skin and warmth of the person he cares most about in the world.

And he was pretty built up, right? Years and years of, just, horrendous examples of interpersonal physical contact. Applying sunscreen should not make his brain do dial-up noises like this!

He chews his tongue. Function. Function like a normal human being, you reprobate. “Yeah, are you-- do you want to put your scarf in the cooler? It’ll get nice and chilled and probably feel really good, after.”

There, that was human conversation. Breathe, Marceliño. We can do this.

Alexei Ivanov

☉

He nodded, tracing his thumb along the ridge of Alex’s knuckles. He hadn’t even thought about the world outside of his frame of reference-- that being people, mostly. But as he listened to Alex explain things, he realized that the dome had upset the world on a much deeper level than just plane schedules and cross-regional communication.

“I didn’t realize,” he said, not able to help the sadness that colored his tone. It was a lot for Alex to deal with. The man’s heart was entirely too fucking big, and he meant that in the best way possible. Alex felt it was his job to take care of everything under the sun, which was what, Memo imagined, led him to create the sanctuary. He’d been a firsthand witness to the self-flagellation Alex subjected himself to when he felt he failed at the, admittedly impossible, job.

“I can try and help,” he suggested-- because in the same way that Alex took the lives of every living thing as his burden, Memo’s own cross to bear was self-sacrifice. “I’ve been pretty busy but--,” I think I’m going to get the job I wanted died on his lips, because he wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a surprise, or if he was just afraid of telling Alex he might be moving to Fortree, or maybe even because he felt like if he spoke it out loud it wouldn’t happen.

He was, deep down, absolutely terrified that Alex would freak out. The man had asked for time, and Memo could give him all the time in the world. But to immediately say it's okay that you don't want to date right now and rubberband that right into hey, I've been manipulating the system so I can move closer to you... Memo was scared Alex would feel that it was an invasion of privacy.

“--but I think things might be slowing down, now. Amazingly, the closer we get to the Meteor, it’s like everyone is… stopping to take a breath.” He traded his wounded look for one of forced happiness, of a peace he felt wasn’t too far off for him to really reach, not in Alex’s presence. Maybe he just needed to fake it a little.

Alexei Ivanov
hot summer nights

☉

“Uhm, well…” he trailed off, thinking about the state of the Pokemon he’d brought, whether or not they’d be capable of being sneaky. In his defense, when he thought about stealth, his first thought was ghost, but Alex was terrified of Ghost-types, and he’d rather not scare the man into lateral recumbency.

”I was thinking that I’d probably take Praxidike and Sibella and try as pull as many off the hive as I could,” he said, having a feeling Alex wasn’t going to like this plan, but suggesting it anyways, because self-martyrdom was his thing, damn it, ”and then you and Kyouya and Gabe and Vince can sneak in and find the queen’s chamber.”

But was Sibella fast enough to outrun a swarm of angry, chaos energy riddled Combee? That was less important than maintaining Alex's safety, in Memo's view, while also completing the mission.

Alexei Ivanov

☉