Noland rolled into the covers that slew his sleep and rubbed slyly against his skin and against the toes of his naked feet.
He was angry that day. The clouds pulsating inside the half-domed orb of the sky were painted gray with the oncoming storm. He imagined himself a plane, gliding into the onslaught of terrible colors and sounds and crashing upon the layers of solid rain, as so many smackings and so many snaps against the winds as a lone Vaporeon cries against the waves. The world was a dismissive entity, an ignorant machine, working day and night against the mere man-made power of his own inventions, his own accord.
Articuno slept inside the powerful mountainous ice underneath the moon. Its wings encased itself softly, as a blanket wrapped around Noland upon his bed. He lay there restless, floating, brain turning and turning upon its weight as he attempted slumber in the simplest midnight sense. It was a failure. He had been defeated. And as his hardened eyes operated against their heavy lids, he wondered what the rest of the world was like right then. At that moment, and only in that point in time.
Sergio slept. The dark-haired man knew this. But as the young man crept only within himself, inside his dreams, he was secretly anticipating an extra visitor.
Noland pondered his existence and the validity of this thought. It was wild. It was born drunk. But as he glanced at his white coat and at his red hat, distinguishably hanging atop a hook on the wall unlike in color scheme to any other lifeless object within the room, he wondered if his future was meant for the mere shadings of the gray. It was like the clouds amidst gloom; his ceiling. He looked up. In his dazed rapidly-moving imagination, he gazed upon the face, the young naivety of the man in status below him. An apprentice. A long-term tease. The roof was made of steel, of powerful metal that slid itself into place by his own forces and by the creatures he had rented. It was a strange duty. He discovered that if a man was keen on supporting a role such as his, he needed to resettle his focus and responsibility manyfold. Such negativity had been subtracted from the contract, he thought, in a keen yet weak attempt at distracting yet again his thoughts from the boy sleeping across the tiny expanse of space that existed between the two; their room.
The sprinklers outside began to burst. Nobody loved a handyman.
He had been out too late. The bars within the Battle Frontier consisted of aisles filled with cheap edible goods and a curfew. He had stumbled into the edifice at the end of the night, designed like a warehouse and used like a pad. Sergio was impatient; he donned plugs, and they were inside his ears. The clock ticked but it didn't bang, lest Noland jump up and stumble into all upon which he looked; in this instance, meaning the learned recluse. The other.
Noland was often outgoing. Sergio was often sensible. Yet the duo made a powerful team, a mechanics master functioning against the coolies and the impressives of the trainers he faced: a collection of easy battles, surely, as all Pokemon in use were indeed the ones he understood and knew. They bounced and they screamed. They were rentals, and they were all his.
Sergio wandered inside his mind. Noland was inevitable distracted and he watched this. The boy jerked his head to submit to his sideswept hair; a taunt. It was a mystery, but it wasn't. He was beautiful. The older man knew. His scars twitched and itched with the sweat. Finally, he flipped upright and moved.
His skin made rustling noises against itself. He wore little. A stumble punctuated his step, teetering slowly further and further across the room toward his destination. It was madness; he knew what he was doing. Barely. His leg brushed its lightly furry self against the foot of the bed; of the private and meditative domain of the young man filled with secret curiosity. Of Sergio.
Noland felt his hand slip clumsily against an arched foot. Would he feel it? he wondered. The Frontier Brain moved a muscled hand through his scruffy hair; shortly kept, rarely maintained. A wonder of care. His fingers moved toward his nose, and rubbed against it.
Minutes passed. His subject remained still, his innocence keeping the best of his slumber as his hands kept free from his precious parts. Noland noticed this. He watched this as he swayed and as he reconsidered. A Poffin Beer could have been traded for consent. A suppressed hiccup; an envied layer of pajamas; a self-inflicted twister of morality and second thoughts. And as the moon shone brilliantly above the sky, between the clouds that so maliciously covered it, the brown-haired man was caught standing there in a swirl, in a stubble-faced aura of vague consciousness, of the vast separation between his muscular and prepared body against the unsuspecting and unobtainable fountain of curly-curved and exasperated youth. Noland grinned, because he realized his hesitation. He understood why.
The universe doesn't smile upon the scratched.