Of course it was near Fortree—and of friggin’ course that was more than enough to lure Alex out of hiding to come by!

(Even if his husband partner Guillermo Marceliño absolutely detested the cold and wanted to stay home, he couldn’t just… ignore the invitation! They were here last year, but only because he’d wheedled Frog so much to come with him…)

…what was it with him and stress-baking, again? Yes, he’d done it again—but no, he wasn’t stressed, he just really wanted to bake for the longest time however he’d been forbidden from setting foot in the kitchen until ungodly hours of the night so there was that.

He would show up carrying several boxes of macarons to pass around when he felt his foot crunch underneath the snow… ah, snow.

The single most alien thing that the Hoenn region would ever experience, all things considered—because Hoenn was a tropical region, snow was just a thing in movies and such… until several years ago when the weather started acting like it had a mind of its own.

Since then? Hoenn always had a ‘winter’ season to speak of!

The moment he got there, though, first thing he did was to head straight towards the ice-skating rink because holy shit he wanted to get down and out on the ice again! Sure, he was no Johnny Weir, but… he could still skate pretty reasonably, right?

(All while holding several macaron boxes, no less!)

Once he’d gotten the black skates off, he gingerly set foot on the ice rink… and off he went!

Thankfully he didn’t crash into anyone during the five minutes he’d decided to take a spin on the rink—though the macaron boxes almost went flying from his hands, oops…

After he’d gotten the skating itch out of his system and swapped back into his boots, he then saw someone familiar—

“Miss Elise!” he called, waving her way. “I have food!”

While waiting for her to notice him, he began scouting the… oh, they were doing it again this year, huh? Alright! He then began to construct a snowman… once more.

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↠ Participate in one of the festival activities (ice skating!)
↠ decoration (97)

When was… when was the last time they met like this? In person, and not through text?

(Honestly, he wasn’t too sure. Most days he would look through the group chat and idly ponder if they were going to meet in person that wasn’t going to result in a food fight…)

So for the next few days prior to the actual meeting, he got busy baking.

(Yes, Guillermo Marceliño asked if he was out of his mind making so many macarons. The answer to that was simply: no. Was he stressed? The good thing was, he wasn’t! So there was that.)

Eventually Birddad™ #1 himself would arrive (as lam logan was Birddad™ #2) accompanied by his Lucario who was helping him carry several boxes of macarons.

For those in the know, this Alex baked a lot of goodies. And they were almost always macarons. They were the one thing he would never fail at. Said macarons just happened to be a wild assortment of flavors sorted by color, too.

(So that was the sugar problem fixed, to an extent.)

“Macaron, anyone?” he began as he set down the several boxes that he was carrying near the table where there were tuna sandwiches… and noticeably only tuna sandwiches spread out so far. Uh-oh!

Once the Lucario had set down the other boxes as well, he recalled the jackal Pokémon before sending a quick text to a certain friend of his which read:

‘help they only have tuna sammiches here at the gym leader meeting. I brought macarons, but we’re gonna need something savory too! can you grab pizza or anything? not sure if you can grab drinks too. will pay you for one, two boxes, get pepperoni and the all-meat if they have it!’

Before sending the message to little Josh Devlin. He noticed that there was just… coffee?

Only coffee?

Out came the phone again, this time to lam logan another message:

‘hey uh. gym leader meeting right now, but they only have coffee for drinks. i brought macarons, but idk if i have time to grab more things, can you get drinks? i’ll pay you when you get here.’

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• Alex went and made macarons for everyone (as you do)
• offered them to the people in the room before belatedly realizing that there was just tuna sammiches for food and coffee for drinks
• sent a text to both little Josh and Lam if they can bring more food and drinks!
• macarons: why are the macarons all pastel, they taste great though