Orange told me to write something about "Barry talking to Palmer because he wants to get a gift for his mom back in Unova. His real mom/Palmer's ex-wife, because he wants to make a good impression now that he's old enough."
I hope ya'll are ready for some quality drunk!Lyra writing. Don't worry, it went through my editor before getting posted.
Oh and the reason I vaguely refer to whatever champion as male is because I figure with how young Cynthia is this is probably before she was Champ but not by much?
Mommy's Birthday
"Daddy?"
Palmer looked up from the match on TV to where Barry had waddled into the room, ragged stuffed wooper in hand, looking far too awake for a 6 year old to look at 10:30 on a school night.
"What's up?" he asked, not yet getting off the couch. His son's requests were often easy, and when they weren't it was usually easier to let him fall asleep on the couch and carry him back to bed rather than coax him to sleep in his own bed.
"Mommy's birthday is soon, right?"
He sat up, grabbing the remote and turning the TV down a few notches. Barry never brought up his mom, not since they'd last seen her two years before, a year after they'd moved to Sinnoh. Barry was far too young to understand the events that had caused his parents to divorce, or why Palmer had been so quick to take a job overseas that separated from his mom, stepdad, and older sister, but he also seemed to be too young to realize this was an irregularity. The fact that one of the friends he'd made at kindergarten also had divorced parents seemed to help, but it was more likely he was just too young to care much yet.
How he knew about a date that Palmer himself was barely able to remember was beyond him, but he had been learning to tell times and dates at school…
"Yeah, yeah I think it is," he told Barry, casting a sideways glance at the calendar in their small house's kitchen. He couldn't read the date from the couch, so he just had to hope he was right and her birthday was somewhere around the end of winter, which was about a month off. "Why? What's up, champ?"
"I want to get a gift for mommy for her birthday. She always sends stuff for my birthday."
For perhaps the first time since Barry had raced home from the second day of kindergarten with a page labeled "When I grow up" and a green, pokeball-wielding stick figure that vaguely resembled him, Palmer felt like a good parent.
"Yeah, we can pick out something for her birthday. How about this weekend?"
"But I want to now…" Barry whined, his voice cracking into a whimper.
Knowing better than to let him reach full tantrum - a level he reached quickly when told no - Palmer dropped the remote and immediately raced across the room to scoop Barry and his wooper up, cradling him close.
"Hey, sport. Sorry but, all the stores are closed this late. You'd have to buy her something from the grocery store, and I think she'd just be disappointed by that."
"I guess," he whined, clutching his dad's neck. He didn't sound too convinced, but he didn't sound tearful anymore either, so Palmer breathed a sigh of relief that he'd cut off the fountain before it could start. "You're a frontier. Can't you just tell the stores to open?" he asked.
"I'm afraid I'm not quite that important," Palmer chuckled. "Your dad's cool, but he's not the champion."
"I don't like champion."
"Well why not?"
"He won't let you beat him."
Palmer couldn't help laughing aloud at that. "Well he wouldn't be a very good champion if he just let people beat him now would he?"
"I'll beat him."
"I'm sure you will someday. Unless I beat him first."
Barry perked up at that, pulling his head off Palmer's shoulder and grinning. "You beat him, daddy."
"I will. But for now, let's figure out when we should go shopping for that present, eh? Maybe Saturday?"
"You promise?"
"We can write it on the calendar if you want."
Barry squeaked in excitement, struggling out of his father's arms and racing into the kitchen, knocking over the entire cup full of pens in the process of pulling one out of it, his wooper forgotten on the living room floor. He'd pulled a chair halfway to the wall - with a series of painful scraping noises - before Palmer had had enough and came in to scoop him up again, holding him facing the calendar. "Here's this Saturday," he told him, putting his finger on the grid for a second before having to return both hands to hoist the kid up a few inches.
"You write it!" Barry demanded, holding the pen to his dad.
"You try first. I know you learned something in school this year."
He frowned, annoyed that his dad would make him write something. "Tell me the letters?"
"It starts with a B…"
"Duh," Barry said, sounding annoyed, but he started muttering "birthday" under his breath, sloppily forming "B-A-R-T- -d-A-Y" and a few dollar signs in mostly caps across Saturday and the blank margain beside it.
"That's not bad," Palmer commended him. "We'll remember for sure now."
"You better!"
"I promise. Now will you go to bed?"
"I'm not sleepy," Barry objected, squirming out of his dad's arms and waddling across the room to pick wooper back up, his pen discarded at his dad's feet. "I wanna watch the pokemon battle with you," he said, pointing at the TV.
"You know you can't sleep in class till nap time," Palmer reminded him.
"I wanna watch the pokemon battle!" Barry repeated, stomping his feet.
Palmer sighed softly, giving his head a slight shake and heading for the couch. "Alright, you can watch with me. But just one match," he cautioned, giving a stern look to the young boy. He ignored it, racing to climb onto the couch and nestle under his dad's arm.
He was asleep before his one match was over, naturally, but Palmer found himself close enough behind that he could barely find the energy to turn off the TV, let alone think about carrying the sleeping child back to his bedroom. He gave the boy's hair a soft stroke, feeling an odd sort of pride at the knowledge his son was, at six, already more thoughtful than he'd ever managed to be, then let himself doze off into the cushions.