Morty doesn't like leaving Ecruteak. Will knows this. He always has, Morty is sentimental and traditional. He was raised in the most traditional town in Johto. He knows Morty has reason to stay, even if he'd like researching legendaries elsewhere. Will likes to travel, though. He traveled everywhere, long before he was an Elite Four member. He had been to all five regions at least once, had so many stories to tell. He couldn't share that with Morty.
Will feels uncomfortable in Ecruteak, even if he stays for Morty's benefit. He is Psychic, he and all his Pokémon are. Now they're surrounded by ghosts. He spends the first few months of his visits with his boyfriend in Morty's favorite place, the Burned Tower, but now he chooses to stay back at Morty's house instead. They've been together long enough, they're mature enough to give each other space with good reason. Morty knows that Will is terrified. Will stays at the house, sometimes for hours, while Morty is gone up to the tower. He knows he's safe there, the ghosts would never harm him. At first, Morty leaves his Pokémon with Will, to keep him company, unknowing that they're the reason he'd like to stay in the first place. Now they all go.
All except Morty's newest edition, his Litwick. She was a gift, from a friend in Unova. A ghost-fire type, something that Morty had never seen before, given to him as an egg and hatched under his tender care. Morty adored her, and wanted to keep her a baby for just a little bit longer. She didn't go training with them. She would sit, while Will read, on a shelf in the traditional sitting room, just above the low table and couch. It had gotten chillier the past month, and Will enjoyed the kotetsu for as long as his legs could stand sitting on them, something Morty always laughed at him for.
Sometimes he would glance up at her, and she would be staring off or milling about carefully on the shelf, babbling softly and barely able to say her own name. He sometimes wondered how a candle could move, but he'd never get close enough to see, had never been very interested in Morty's Pokémon or what they did. They were ghosts. While she was cute, she still made him uneasy. Pokémon did what they did, some of it would never make sense. He would brush it off.
Morty would come back, looking happy and sweaty and in need of a good meal. Will wouldn't think of her until later in the night, when they laid in Morty's traditional bed that made his back hurt for days after coming home from his visits. Morty didn't keep her in her Pokéball much, he didn't keep any of his Pokémon in them usually, unless Will was staying; only Litwick and his Gengar would stay out of them then.
His home didn't have much use for electricity; one small light in each room, and the appliances in the kitchen. It was outdated, compared to the Plateau, but not run down. When the lamp in his room went off, if it had been on at all, Litwick would be the only source of light. It was eerie, had taken time to get used to. Purple, though it was his favorite color, still made him incredibly uneasy this way. Morty would be so quick to fall asleep, his arms wound tight around his waist, making him feel much safer, but… It had taken weeks to be able to sleep in his house. He still couldn't do it easily. Gengar would often barge in on them, jealous, or cackle at him from the ceiling. The Pokémon knew he was afraid and, unlike his boyfriend, loved to exploit the fact.
That had taken time to get used to, but now he welcomed Gengar's needed distractions. Nothing was like that unnerving, silent stare. Perhaps ghost Pokémon didn't sleep, he had never wanted to ask. Even as a baby, Litwick wouldn't. She would sit, on the shelf across his room, and stare at him and Morty, her one visible eye blank and yellow, never blinking. Her endless wax would drip down over the rest of her face, she would smile serenely, and she would stare. He can't help but stare back, for the first long nights he spends, until he feels too tired to keep his eyes open.
He remembers, when Morty got her as an egg, his boyfriend reading up on her. She was a new Pokémon, not native to their region, that was natural. Her Pokédex entry was far from that, though. Litwick shines a light that absorbs the life energy of people and Pokémon, which becomes the fuel that it burns. While shining a light and pretending to be a guide, it leeches off the life force of any who follow it. Morty had laughed, likened it to some Hoenn Region ghost type with a lantern that he (luckily, Will had thought,) didn't have.
Litwick hatched and Morty hadn't stopped talking about her for weeks. It had been cute, like a father with his newborn daughter. That, at least, had made Will smile. When he came back, a month or so later from official business, the little Pokémon has gone from sleeping (haphazardly and dangerously) on Morty's pillow or just beside it, to the shelf across the room. Where candles ought to go, Morty had teased her.
She had been cute, even he had admitted it when she'd hatched, and she was kinder than Morty's other Pokémon, wanting to hop up onto his hand and give him more light to read when she could convey her simple thoughts. Now she only gives him nightmares. He stares at her for hours, before sleeping, feeling the tug on his energy, slowly getting sleepier and sleepier, until he passes out and Morty wakes him late in the day, laughing at how lazy he's gotten.
He can't look away.