A/N: So one afternoon, after accidentally discovering that the Xtranciever function of the WFC was basically just video chat, my mind jumped to jokes about why online interactions aren't rated by the ESRB. This in turn jumped to a series of cracks about Xtranciever sex, a line of humor that Makomaragi and I managed to drive into the ground over the course of that same evening.
This is one of two fics that came out of that joke. The other is a far more serious Visorshipping fic that should find itself online later this week.
By the way, if you clicked expecting a lemon, you're about to be disappointed – I've momentarily returned to my comedy roots.
One (1) New Message
Lyraeon/Lyra Kamiya
"Pleaaaase?"
"For the last time Bianca, no. I'm not- just no."
"But why not?!"
"Because it's stupid? Not to mention awkward."
"But you got to see me! It's not fair."
"I-" Cheren let out a noise of frustration that was better suited to have come from one of his pokemon than from his own mouth, reaching up to squeeze the bridge of his nose in frustration. He kept his eyes closed and counted slowly down from ten, a technique he'd been employing in dealing with his girlfriend since well before she was his girlfriend.
Their relationship had only graduated to that level a few weeks prior, just in time for him to be shipped to the other side of Unova by the league, because for whatever asinine reason they couldn't find him a gym leader post closer to home. The timing had caused his newly-romantic relationship to move a bit faster than he felt was proper – in other words, at about the same rate as the average relationship of other teens their age – leaving him and Bianca between the sheets every night for the last weekend he was in town. Not to mention twice, in very quick succession, with her bent over his new desk, just for good measure, when she'd shown up in Aspertia by chance, "chance" in this case defined as "Professor Juniper's meddling".
Overall the only objection he had to any of this, besides the obvious problem of a good 500 miles separating them now, was that he'd broken the 90-day rule by having sex with her so soon, and maybe that he hadn't asked for a blowjob while he had the chance. Bianca, on the other hand, apparently had a long list of incredibly random issues with the situation, none of which had even crossed Cheren's mind, and topping the list was-
"I just want to see it. Just for a second. It's been inside of me, so I don't see what the big deal is." Her voice, chipper but confused, rang up from the Xtraciever on his wrist. He sighed again, reaching to adjust glasses he kept forgetting weren't there, and glanced around the room to be sure no students had snuck in before answering her.
"First of all, there's the fact you can't even seem to say the word 'penis', which is making all of this a little more uncomfortable for me than it already was." He heard a noise from the small speaker that he recognized as prefacing one of Bianca's infamous pouts, and he held his hand up between his face and the screen, both trying to block the power of her puppy-eyes and tell her to hang on a second while he made it at least partway through his mental list. "Second, I don't see why it's a big deal for you to need to see my penis so badly." He cringed at the way his own voice wavered at the word so soon after scolding her for her inability to say it, "Second part B, I didn't exactly stop to look at you like that anyway, so that point is null."
"I'll let you see me, then," Bianca offered, her face tinting a brilliant – but frustratingly adorable, to Cheren – shade of red.
"N-no!" he stammered, gaining a blush to match as his mind offered up the rather unnecessary image of Bianca trying to hold her wrist at the angle such a feat would require. "No," he repeated more calmly, "that won't be necessary. Which brings me to point three; I don't like the idea of us seeing each other like that for the first time on these tiny screens."
Bianca blinked, then a look of understanding crossed her face – only to be followed by a fit of giggles, right as he was starting to feel like he'd gotten his point across. "Oh Cheren, you're so silly. Don't worry. I know how big it is already. The fact that the picture's little won't give me the wrong idea."
"That's not!" He caught himself mid-yell, his palm rubbing across his full face as frustration welled back up and exploded into annoyance. "That's not what I meant. I just meant that it seems really impersonal, that's all."
He glanced back at his wrist, where Bianca's lower lip was in full pout, an effect that was multiplied by the pinkness still staining her cheeks. "I don't think it's impersonal," she said quietly. "I think, since we've already made love, it's pretty normal..."
"Bianca..."
"Sorry... It's just that I'm stuck all alone over here in Castelia... I guess I kind of wanted something new to remember you by..."
She fidgeted in a way that wasn't entirely visible from the angle her wrist provided, but it told him she was being earnest, not just trying to guilt trip him. He sighed yet again, staring at the ceiling for several seconds, then glancing back down to see that Bianca's face hadn't changed, and that her eyes were still pointed off to the side somewhere, occasionally darting nervously to see his expression.
"...Look. The truth is... Well, the truth is all of those things. But I also just don't think I can get it up on the phone like this. It's just... kind of weird, and every time I think about it I just feel like it's not going to work. It doesn't feel right."
"Oh," she answered quietly, her pout fading. "...I might be able to inspire you?"
He could tell from her tone of voice that she was joking, but his eyes went wide before his brain could process anything beyond the slight jiggle she used to punctuate her sentence.
"I'm kidding," she giggled, "don't worry."
He gave another frustrated groan, equal parts at her shenanigans and the distance between them.
"But... it kind of gives me an idea. The Xtranciever can send pictures, too, without having to be on the phone. You could," she had to pause to gather her thoughts, her blush flaring back up as she spoke, "you could just wait until you were, um, inspired again, and then take a picture for me then? That way you wouldn't be so nervous."
He still felt odd about the suggestion, but he couldn't think of any reasonable arguments against it, so he gave a defeated sigh. "I'll think about it, I guess. But no promises."
Bianca squealed, grinning and blowing a kiss at the screen. "Thank youuuuu!"
"No promises!" he repeated, rolling his eyes when she squealed again anyway.
They hung up a few moments later, leaving him to collapse backward in his desk chair, exhausted. He'd expected being in a long-distance relationship to be complicated and have its share of strange problems, but this wasn't one he'd anticipated.
"When did my girlfriend become a pervert?" he asked the ceiling, since no one else was around to listen. "And where did my testosterone go wrong that I consider that a bad thing?"
A gym challenger came before too long, distracting him from the situation – at least until he looked back at his Xtranciever, a couple hours after the match had ended. It was late enough in the day that he considered the gym closed, however, and so he locked up most of the school, telling the last couple of kids who were in the library to shut the door behind them, and climbed the stairs to his quarters.
He found it surprisingly easy to get aroused. Once he considered the fact he hadn't gotten off since Bianca had been in town and the fact he could still, very clearly, picture the way her ass had looked as she called out his name on his desk, the surprise faded. The memory was so helpful, in fact, that he barely remembered why he'd been in such a hurry to jack himself off, and it was only the strap of his watch rubbing uncomfortably past his stomach as he switched hands that reminded him.
"I guess I should at least try to send her that picture," he gulped, taking a few seconds to change his Xtranciever to photo mode. Holding his wrist at an angle and distance that got his entire dick in the shot proved difficult, and the annoyance meant he had to stop in order to get himself photo-ready again twice before he finally got a picture he was even halfway satisfied with. He stared at the image for a few seconds, feeling morally conflicted both about sending "innocent" Bianca such a picture, and at staring at a dick, even his own, for so long.
"Damn't, she can wait," he said finally, quickly unfastening the watch and tossing it onto his nightstand, then flopping over to finish the job uninterrupted.
-o-o-
He woke up, some portion of an hour later, one hand clutching the blanket to his waist and the other still holding a wad of tissues, to the sound of his Xtranciever ringing. The tissue hand shoved its contents onto the nightstand and groped around for the watch, grabbing it and squinting at the screen. His eyes felt dry and scratchy, which he quickly realized meant he'd left his contacts in again, a habit he had sworn he'd never get into and yet had managed virtually every night since arriving in Aspertia.
The corner of the screen told him it was 8:49, too early for sleep to be an excuse not to answer, so he checked the caller ID in hopes it'd give him an excuse instead.
Professor Juniper, Bianca, and Nate; there was nothing about the list that would justify sending the call to voicemail. He gave his eyes a half-assed rub, sat up properly, and made sure the blankets were nice and fastened over everything his shirt didn't cover, since nothing else was doing the job at the moment.
Unfortunately, the call proved to be nothing worth waking up for; it was some errand that Nate had inspired that they needed Cheren's help on. While he knew better than to not answer one of Juniper's calls, he made a mental note to turn his Xtranciever off entirely before going to sleep from now on.
Nate and Juniper hung up before Bianca, and it took her chirping a "wait!" for him to notice she'd lagged behind.
"Hmm?"
"I... I just wanted to say goodnight," she said shyly, playing with her hair a little.
He sighed softly, unable to help smiling at the sight. "Goodnight, Bianca."
She didn't answer for a few seconds, and it took all of Cheren's willpower not to roll his eyes because he knew what was coming. "I..." For a few seconds, she stared off into the distance, before turning to make eye contact with him. To his surprise, when she finally finished her thought, it wasn't a reminder of their earlier conversation, but instead a quiet, "I love you, okay?"
His smile returned, and as silly as he felt doing so, he blew a kiss at the screen. "I love you too." It was only about the third time he'd said the words to her, but the slight flutter in his chest at the bashful grin she flashed him told him that yes, he meant it, even at a distance.
"Sweet dreams, okay?" she giggled, blowing him a kiss in return.
He nodded. "You too."
For a moment after hanging up, he sat there vacantly, letting his mind replay the pleasant tune of Bianca's words to him, surprised at how much they relaxed him. Just as sleep almost overtook him, his eyes started to itch again. With a groan, he climbed off his bed and stumbled his way to the bathroom, taking out his contacts and otherwise preparing himself to go to bed properly. He was no longer as tired, however, so he grabbed himself a book and his old glasses, climbing back into bed to read for a couple hours.
Once each of his arms had had their share of falling asleep from holding his weight on his elbows, he finally shut the book, reaching to set his alarm and turn out the table light. As he did, his hand bumped the Xtranciever, and with a slight sense of dread he remembered the awkward photo, and the adorable girl expecting it.
"...Well, at least this way it'll be over with," he grumbled, pulling back up the partial self-portrait from his gallery. He felt an odd sort of uncomfortable at the picture – most of it resulting from the fact he was nowhere near as uncomfortable with sending it to Bianca as he felt he should have been – but clicked "send to" and then "last call" anyway.
"There. One less thing to worry about," Cheren sighed as the sending message appeared on his screen. He knew it was foolish to think Bianca would dislike the picture in any way, and he knew that he was never going to get less self-conscious about doing so, so getting it over with was for the best. For a second, the idea of getting a picture back from her as thanks crossed his mind, but he shook his head and blocked it out – partially because he'd had enough embarrassment for the day, and partially because he was too tired to want a round two.
Finally, he clicked the light off, leaving his glasses on the nightstand with his watch and rolling over to sleep.
Some time during the night – probably less than an hour, but he was too groggy to know or care – Cheren was vaguely aware of a chiming noise from his phone. It was just a message, not his phone ringing, so he pulled the covers up more firmly over his head, rolled over, and fell back asleep.
-o-o-
A few hundred miles away, the source of the message sat, looking vaguely pleased with himself, on a bunk at the Castelia Pokemon Center. It had taken him the better part of an hour, including a lengthy phone call to his rather confused looking best friend, for him to understand why he'd gotten a rather revealing photo from his hometown's Gym Leader. He'd eventually narrowed it down to three options, which in turn were narrowed down to two once he and Hugh agreed that the notion of Cheren having a significant other was preposterous.
Either it was some form of League hazing, where Cheren was forced to show his junk to the first trainer who'd defeated him, and had neglected to do so before now, or he was trying to come onto Nate. He was a little concerned that he was a bit young for the latter, but either way, he was satisfied both with the image he kept pulling back up on his Xtranciever, and at the one he'd sent Cheren in response.
The time on his watch clicked over to midnight, and through the crack around the door, he could see the lights in the hall of the pokemon center turn off. He'd lucked into getting a room to himself for the night, and with inspiration from his new friend in hand, he planned to use that opportunity to the fullest.
-o-o-
Thanks to the magic of time zones, morning came an hour earlier in Nuvema than the western two-thirds of Unova, and as always, Professor Juniper was up before her alarm, enjoying a cup of coffee and reading through her emails on her laptop. Just as she got up for a refill and a slice of toast, a familiar Munna came floating through the kitchen. Following it, in a baby pink robe and matching slippers, was the eternally sleepy looking Fennel, her bangs tucked haphazardly behind her ears, as she hadn't bothered with her usual hair clip yet.
"G'morning," she yawned, waving her fingers and then stretching dramatically. "What's for breakfast?"
"Anything you want," Aurea promised her, giving the shorter woman a kiss on the forehead.
Unfortunately for the long-time girlfriends, their respective research labs kept them from actually living together, or even being very open with their relationship. Fennel had the more flexible schedule of the two, and so she spent an increasingly large number of weekends a year at Juniper's lab, often showing up on the Friday night commuter ferry now that she was set up in Castelia. Aurea tended to work, at least somewhat, straight through the weekend, but just sitting nearby or even playing housewife for a couple of days seemed to relax Fennel, so she never minded.
"Hmm... give me a few minutes to wake up, and I'll make pancakes?" Fennel didn't believe in caffeine, and instead usually sipped on a cup of green tea and stared out the window for a few minutes to wake herself up in the mornings.
"I can make them," Aurea offered, only to be scolded and waved away from the stove as Fennel set her kettle onto it.
"You go finish your emails, I'll make them. Then we can eat without interruptions."
"Alright, alright. Thank you." She leaned down for a quick kiss before finally getting her refill and heading back to her desk.
Fennel spent a good ten minutes in her usual morning trance before she finally looked conscious, at which point she shuffled her way around the kitchen.
Aurea had moved on from reading her actual emails and was checking the night's Xtranciever calls and messages now, leaning back in her chair a bit. The lab had an emergency number that all her trainers knew to use for anything vital, so it was usually just a collection of pictures her aids – mostly Bianca, as her formal apprentice – had sent at her request, with the occasional "I just got a badge" message from her trainers.
She was surprised to find, amongst the usual names, a message from Cheren; it had been easily two years since he'd last sent her a message, which suited his self-sufficient personality just fine. With a shrug, she took another sip of her coffee and opened the message.
Fennel nearly dropped the milk carton at the sound of her girlfriend suddenly violently choking from across the room.
She pushed it onto the counter with the other ingredients, hurried over to where Juniper was hunched over in her chair, and started patting her on the back, taking her coffee cup from her before she dropped it and trying desperately to get her to calm down. "What's wrong? Honey, what's wrong?" she asked, gently but insistently, as Aurea stopped coughing. "Is everything okay?"
"Your fucking nephew," she croaked, wiping her mouth with her now-empty hand. She wasn't one to curse, particularly when it came to family or her trainers, so Fennel knew something serious must have happened.
"Cheren?! What on earth did he do?"
"He-" she glanced back down at her Xtranciever, wincing. "Oh, Arceus."
"What happened? Oh no, he didn't... he didn't get Bianca pregnant, did he?"
"No!" Aurea shouted, alarmed that Fennel had managed to find one thing worse than the actual truth.
"What happened?" Fennel repeated, trying to see the screen in her girlfriend's hand to know what had her so distraught.
"You don't need to see this," she tried to assure her, which only made Fennel's concerned look grow. "Correction, you don't want to see this, I promise."
"Did he get hurt?"
Aurea gave her a skeptical look.
"What is it the- OH. Oh no. But... Cheren wouldn't do something like- Oh my, now I'm confused." Fennel said, sitting on her knees on the floor.
"I'm sure I got it by mistake. There's no way the photo was meant for anyone but Bianca," Juniper sighed.
To her surprise, Fennel suddenly started to laugh, covering her mouth as a couple quick squeaks quickly grew into a full-blown giggle fit.
"I fail to see what about this is funny."
"Awww, young love," she answered between giggles. "They grow up so fast."
Juniper sighed and rubbed her forehead, muttering that sometimes she wasn't sure why she loved Fennel so much. "Let's... let's just have breakfast. We need to call him and talk to him about this, before he does anything else stupid."
-o-o-
Cheren had a policy of not answering his phone before 10 AM. He was, generally, up by seven, but it was the principle of the thing. If someone needed him before retail business hours, it had better be an emergency, and even with his non-League issued team, he hardly considered himself the right person to be called in an emergency.
Juniper calling him at 7:45 was very likely not an emergency, especially since the Professor had a ludicrous – by his generation's standards – idea of morning.
Juniper calling him at 7:45, 7:47, 7:52, and 8:03, with a "call me when you wake up" message in between the last two attempts, was liable to be an emergency. Even if not, it was liable to be something he was going to regret pressing "send to voicemail" on that many times. The Professor had no direct authority over him anymore, but she was, to put it bluntly, fucking his mom's little sister, and he knew better than to intentionally piss off family. Even in the case of family that, legally speaking, didn't have a chance to be considered family until at least twelve weeks after the next election.
There was barely more than an hour remaining before his students would arrive when her fifth attempt arrived at 8:22, and so Cheren finally, begrudgingly, grabbed the watch from his spot under the covers and, clicked "accept" on the tiny screen, and held it at half an arm's length over his head. The distance was a poor substitute for putting on his glasses, but it was the most he was willing to do before breakfast.
"Cheren!" came Juniper's urgent cry from the other end of the line, and for a few seconds he wondered if not answering before had been a mistake.
"Professor... hi," he said in his best impression of playing dumb, "what time is it?"
"It – Cheren it's past the time your gym should be open, even if it is a Saturday. You had better have a sign on the door downstairs."
He sighed, wondering if she'd really called purely to wake him up. "I've had four challengers in two weeks. No one even knows I'm here yet."
"Well good because I need your undivided attention for a few minutes."
Cheren felt a sense of dread wash over him at the Professor's serious tone. When his aunt appeared from over her shoulder, waving a piece of toast cheerfully before taking a bite out of it, the sensation only multiplied.
"Listen to her good, Cheren!"
"Fennel... What's going on?"
She burst out laughing and disappeared from the frame, her voice fading into the background, he found himself praying for an unexpected challenger. He still wasn't sure what was going on, but giving out a badge in his pajamas sounded preferable to whatever the two scientists were planning to inflict on him.
Juniper sighed, clearing her throat and doing her best to talk over Fennel's giggling. "Look, Cheren. You're what, seventeen now?"
"Eighteen," he corrected brazenly, his frown growing more pronounced. "I'm five months older than Hilda and eight months older than Bianca." It was a technicality, he had to admit, but he was, legally speaking, an adult, on top of the status that being a Gym Leader already granted him.
"Yes, eighteen. That's... better," Juniper muttered, relieved that she could wipe "child porn" off the list of problems with the current situation, "but, that just makes what I'm about to say even more important."
He stared at her, looking increasingly annoyed, and then with a dramatic sigh, sat up and put his glasses on. "Okay, where are you going with this?"
"Well, you see Cheren, when a man loves a woman-"
He cut her off with a dramatic groan, rubbing his nose between his lenses. "Or a woman loves a woman, or etcetera," he added with a loud sigh. "I already know the facts of life, so whatever naive notion you picked up from spying on Bianca and I while we were kissing, you can forget about it."
Aurea looked entirely unimpressed as she stared back at him, prompting him to groan louder still. "Believe me Cheren, that makes me relieved to hear, but this wasn't going to be a talk about safe sex, unless you feel you two need that too."
He stared at her, deadpan and unblinking, and she shook her head.
"Look, just be glad Fennel and I decided to call you on our own, instead of talking to your parents about it. Because you both-"
"We're both adults, Professor!" he shouted, raising his voice beyond what he knew he was capable of. "Or at least, she will be in two months. And if you think you're going to turn us in, or whatever crazy notion you've suddenly gotten into your head – need I remind you that you are the one who sent her over here within days of me leaving Nuvema? I'm willing to argue in a court of law that you knowingly sent her into such a-"
"Cheren! That is not at all what I was calling about! Though if you want me to get you tried for statutory, I will see into it, assuming you don't shut up and listen to me."
He went deadly silent, staring back at her, tension filling the space between them. Fennel's hysterical laughter floated back into hearing range, ruining the seriousness of the moment, and Cheren sighed, flopping back into the corner his bed was propped into. "Alright, fine. Give it to me straight then, adult to adult, not one of your lectures for beginners."
"When a man loves a woman," Juniper began again, holding up a finger to shush Cheren when he started to sigh dramatically again, "he can be driven to do some fairly stupid things to impress her. Things that can, very easily, get him in trouble, or at the least humiliate him."
"Yes, I'm aware of that as well," he said finally, once she put her hand down. "I think it's called middle school. I lived through three years of it. What's your point?"
"My point is, that it's very easy to get yourself in trouble when you're trying to impress a girl."
He resisted the urge to tell her that Bianca was rather easy to impress, in part because he'd been trying not to think about that detail himself.
"...You need to look at your address book a little more carefully, Cheren."
"What the fuck is that supposed to-"
He stopped mid-sentence and fell into an incoherent sound of alarm, his voice growing shrill and his eyes widening until only his glasses seemed to be keeping them inside his head. "Fuck," he squeaked finally, once his voice had risen to helium-inspired levels.
Juniper cleared her throat again, her voice strained with sympathy as she continued her lecture. "I fully agree that you and Bianca are, uh, old enough to make your own decisions. So, so long as I see nothing questionable about your relationship, I will continue to support it. However..." her tone faltered, her seriousness fading as she let out a defeated sigh. "Look, Cheren, who the hell knows who else saw your dick last night. Don't send shit like that out without triple checking. In fact, just don't send shit like that out at all, because it might get used as revenge-fodder later on. Thank goodness your face isn't in it."
He stared at some far wall of the room, nodding stiffly. If Juniper had gotten the image, who knew what other portion of his contact list he'd exposed himself to the night before? He wasn't honestly sure if checking or just committing sepukku on the spot would be less demeaning. "Yeah," he muttered weakly, gulping hard.
"And I know you've probably heard this ten thousand times, but please use protection."
He didn't even have the force of will left to say, "We will." He only nodded.
"I'm going to delete the picture now, and I won't ever bring it up again, but for the love of pokemon, Cheren, be more careful from now on."
He nodded again, wanting deep in his heart to thank both Professors for not telling his parents. His would have little to say on the subject, but they also wouldn't hide the situation from Bianca's parents, and her dad-
"Don't worry, Professor," he croaked, his throat dry. "I will. We will."
She thanked him before hanging up, and both sat in their respective pools of frustration, pondering where life had gone wrong for the conversation to become necessary.
Of course, aside from having the rather unnecessary confirmation that Cheren and Bianca were indeed going at it, the ordeal was over for Juniper. She had scolded her charge appropriately, and was now free to enjoy pancakes at her leisure and spend a decade using Cheren's plight as an anonymous cautionary tale.
For Cheren, the fun was only just beginning. Not only did he still have to endure Bianca's critique later in the evening – he knew it would be gentle, but that hardly changed things where his ego was concerned – but he still had to play damage control with whomever else he'd unknowingly sent the picture to.
It wasn't until after a very light breakfast that he finally found the willpower to check his outgoing messages.
There was only one other name on the outgoing message list. Nate's presence there was something he was simultaneously appalled, and, due to the fact he was capable of logical thought at how his picture-sending might have gone wrong, unsurprised to find on the list. At the very least he was relieved both to find that his was the only other name associated with his self-portrait, and that he'd already responded, and it hadn't been an angry phone call.
With the same let's-get-this-over-with sigh he'd let out upon sending the photo the night before, Cheren clicked on the message from Nate, literally bracing himself against the wall as it loaded.
Much to his shock – indeed, once his brain managed to process what he was looking at, to his horror – the picture response from Nate wasn't a hilarious reaction image mocking Cheren's manhood. It was, instead, a pair of rather explicit before and after photos, the timestamps on which anyone not as severely mortified as Cheren would have found quite impressive.
For now, he only found them extremely alarming.
The one bright side, he realized as he threw his Xtranciever across the room to be temporarily lost in some corner, was that by comparison to his morning, Bianca's reaction would be easy to handle. He just hoped he'd have a challenger that day, to distract him from all the shame until then.
Hope you enjoyed it. I know it was fun as hell to write, and done in record time. To be honest, I kind of miss writing comedy stuff, even as much as I love writing romance/smut.
I'd love it if you could take the time to review 3 especially to let me know if you'd like to see more silliness like this in the future.