this is the extended and rewritten version of SFC Ch 28!
song inspiration: Fifteen, by Taylor Swift
Crys, twenty-five and living her best life, hums as she hangs up a bright green coat in the back of her closet. Winter is drawing closed and she, for one, is very excited to bring out her summer gear. She'd managed to get away with shorts beneath her labcoat in autumn, but then it had started snowing and she gave that up fast. So here she is, bundling the big puffy thing back into the closet for another seasonal cycle. It slips off the hanger on the first try, which is no surprise, since the coat weighs about as much as a well-fed Chikorita — and she is very familiar with such a term of measurement; yes, it's very professional; no, it isn't hyperbole.
Bending down to pick it up, her hands come upon a large binder. Huh. There's no reason for a binder to be here, buried in the back of her closet. She reaches for it.
What she pulls out has little to do with science, however. It is indeed a binder, but this one is a dark navy blue and embossed in tacky gold. It's not something she would have ever purchased for herself, and as soon as this realization strikes, she remembers what it is that she's holding.
So she finishes hanging up her coat and brings the binder into her living room. It sits heavily on her lap. She opens it and finds herself face to face with a much younger version of herself. This Crys still has her hair tied up in those fantabulous ponytails, but in her proud hands is a framed document officially crediting her for her first major publication with Professor Oak, Green's grandfather.
Crys remembers gazing over the magnificent hills of Pallet Town and thinking, "So this is my new home. Greener than I'm used to," and laughing at her own terribly insensitive pun.
Crys flips the page and gasps aloud. The sound echoes in her empty living room; she can hear, faintly, her team scattered throughout the house and some of the fluffier Pokémon enjoying the last dredges of winter outside. But her mind is set on a different set of companions:
The next couple pages are filled completely from what looks like one of the yearly banquet dinners the Dex Holders used to do.
Photo number two is a typical line-up of the first thirteen of them, all grinning or winking or smirking or beaming or scowling or glaring or laughing at the camera. Oh, she remembers that day well.
Fifteen and spirited, Crystal makes her rounds with genuine cheer. This is worth putting off work for, definitely. It's been ages since she's seen anyone. Well, excepting Green, who she sees weekly, if not daily; and except Silver, who drops by for chess and tea every weekend; and also Blue, who occasionally drags her out to dinner after harassing Green for a while; and then there are Red and Yellow, who she knows she must have seen at least once in the last six months.
Anyway.
The point is, things have changed since she was twelve and traveling, and while she wouldn't give up this brand-new job opportunity for anything, she does miss everybody a lot. There's a camaraderie that grows louder the more of them there are. It should be comfortable. And it is.
Sort of.
But she's also distracted, trying not to crane her neck, and waiting, waiting, waiting. It's nearly two hours in before the one she's been looking for saunters in with a shout and some take-away he literally flew across the region for them all.
It's like they're planets in two separate solar systems, Crystal thinks to herself at one point, sipping her apple juice and trying to figure out whose fault it is that she hasn't so much as exchanged a word with Gold all night. They're both orbiting, both in constant cyclical momentum, but not yet colliding. Not circling the same thing. Not focused on the same star.
Shame, that. She briefly wonders if she knows any astrologists-
"Hey, Super Serious Gal. Haven't seen you around in a while." She barely restrains her shriek of surprise, for there's an extremely cold hand wrapped around her shoulder.
Real-time Crys feels her chest tightening and quite literally shakes her head, hoping to coax her out of following that memory too far. She remembers the rest of that evening, remembers warmth and low laughter and a terrace and a stroll, remembers what comes next.
"So dramatic," Crys chastises herself, joking. "You don't need to walk that road. Please don't, actually; it won't do anything good for your psyche. At all. You know that." And she does.
She also knows better now than to trust a fifteen-year-old's declarations of love.
So Crys flips past a couple pages. Then a few more. She keeps turning, eyes hovering just above the actual photos taped down, and she wishes she hadn't let such a streak of sentimentality take over her. When she finally leaves behind the soft restaurant glow and that dress, the one with the too-long sleeves and too-deep neck, it's to something even worse.
The third picture makes her want to burn the book and also hug it tight. It's blurry from then night sky and a shaking hand and not knowing what the camera was truly aimed at, but she remembers it well enough.
The full moon light means that they don't strictly need to hold hands, but they do, climbing one of Pallet's famous hills and taking a seat beneath the stars. It's her favorite date so far, though she holds each one in fond regard. Yes, even the Fondue Incident. And the one with the lollipop. Truly. But this one has been classic and charming and easy and comfortable and sweet and so much fun, if a lot less adventurous than usual.
But since their most adventurous date started with Gold's Typhlosion tossing the both of them over his shoulder and taking off, she's okay with that.
By the time she made it back to her room, she was walking on clouds and dancing, spinning, behind the closed window blinds in her room. She thinks, then, that she might love him, and it's the first time that the thought doesn't scare her, because she's only fifteen and she still believes that love can just be something that happens.
She brushes her fingers over the paired faces, both strangely lit from an off-centered flash, and the grins beneath are protected by plastic. Then she turns the page and regrets it, again. Why is she doing this to herself, seriously?
She wants to murder Blue. Silver probably wouldn't be too happy with her, but that's too bad. Thanks to Blue, about half the Dex Holders are cooing over personal copies of a kiss that, blessedly, is not Crystal's first. It's still hers, though, hers and his, and she's not overly fond of such a moment in everybody's scrapbooks. For a moment, she almost regrets not giving into the urge.
It's well-into a beloved movie night between the Kanto seniors and their Johto juniors when Gold stops her in the hallway, a bowl of fresh popcorn in her hands, and takes her face in his hands and kisses her. It's well-into this instituted commercial break when Crystal hears the camera and her head abruptly explodes.
But even as Crystal shrieks mortified bloody murder at her feckless senior, she knows that she's doing it with Gold's hands twisted tightly in the back of her sweatshirt, and she knows that she'll forgive the pesky, perky woman. After all, now Crystal has her own copy of a kiss that is one of her first.
It doesn't get any better than this: knocking around a city, better than any rom-com Blue's put her through, their elbows linked, a bag of leftovers swinging from her other hand, the memory of an out-of-nowhere kiss tingling on her cheek from just a couple minutes ago.
She was wrong, of course, but that's not surprising. Teenagers — kids, adults, elders, too — are very bad at getting their feelings right. It's nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, Crys is grateful that she can look at her quarter-century of life and see an uphill trend. Sure, there are as many dips as there are spikes, but that's pretty good too. So she's proud of herself, Crys is.
After all, there are only a handful of dozens who have completed a single PokéDex, never mind three. And, not just anybody could work their way though one with the intention of proving or disproving every single statistic there was in it. Phew. She's actually still working on that, but she's making good headway. The Fearow have finally stopped flying away. That's progress.
Unless prior commitments elbow their way through, each of their dates has been longer than its forerunner, and she's almost nerdy enough to run a significance test on it. She doesn't, though, because she's a researcher, not a statician, and then it's too late.
"You can't be serious," she says slowly, staring at him. All this time, she's learned to identify warmth as a good thing: leaning into him during late nights, curling up on a couch, tugging on his sweatshirt after forcing it through the washer/dryer, his breath against her neck. But this isn't warmth. This is heat and the world is on fire and she does not like it at all.
Gold doesn't answer, which isn't good.
"Serious is my job," Crystal says, her words picking up speed until they're tripping over each other in a way her legs never have. "Jokes is you. Pranks. Understatement. Exaggeration. Funny. You're funny, Gold, you know that?" Oh, she's desperate now and in denial and it's disgusting. She can taste it.
It tastes nasty. So she swallows and does not kiss him and does not say anything else. There is nothing more to be said.
mangaquestshipping is my other pokémon otp!