Attached at the Wrist
L.R.T.
They ran faster than they'd ever run before - through bushes, past trees, hopping over rotting logs, and attempting to navigate through a cluster of prickly thorn bushes; but no matter how far they thought they had gotten, the sounds of agitated Growlithe could be heard growling and barking seemingly right next to their ears. If they were caught, it was likely they would never see the light of day again and neither was particularly thrilled at the thought of several years in a prison with real criminals that would laugh in their faces if regaled with a story about their exploits. That's why despite the burning pain in their legs and chests, the stumbles over sticks and roots that made them crash into each other, they kept running.
Usually more adept than most at avoiding incarceration (thanks to a twerp and his Pikachu making them "blast off" before authorities had the chance to arrest them), this time was drastically different; this time there was no abandoning your partner to save yourself or splitting up and climbing around the forest like an Aipom, confusing the police and their Pokemon until they finally just gave up.
This time they were stuck with each other.
The sounds of the man-hunt were becoming more and more distant, a faint howl far away the last thing they heard before finally collapsing to the forest floor, gasping for breath. James laid on his back, arms and legs sprawled out, long blue hair stuck to his cheeks and neck with sweat from his unexpected (and unwanted) work out; Jessie mimicked him, the top of her head touching the top of his as they laid spread out vertically from each other. Neither said a word, their lungs still struggling to retain air and function normally again.
As if they had received a mental message from the other, Jessie and James turned their heads in the same direction, eyes locking on her right arm and his left, the steel of the handcuffs shining back brightly into their eyes from the hot late-afternoon sun reflecting against it. Jessie tugged, yanking James's arm up and making him yelp out and return the favor, her yelp a series of profanities.
"This is all your fault," she said at last, staring up through the treetops at the sky above.
"Of course it is," he grumbled in return, giving her wrist one more yank for good measure.
She tugged again at his, growling. "Stop it! It's bad enough that you went and got us arrested -"
"I may have accidentally blown our cover," he began, shutting his eyes and blowing a piece of hair from his face, "but I wasn't the one that insulted Officer Jenny."
"I didn't insult her," Jessie retorted. "I said she looked more like she belonged on a street corner than in a police station. That was honesty."
"The one time you decide to be honest and you have to question how she can catch perps while wearing hooker heels."
"Well, we got our answer, didn't we?" She shifted uncomfortably against the ground. "She sends the Growlithe instead."
"Who we really should be angry at is Meowth," James said with a frown, resting his free hand behind his head. "We were getting 'cuffed together and read our rights and he was acting like a regular old Meowth."
"I swear I even saw him rub up against Jenny's leg."
"Wouldn't surprise me." Turning his head to look at their captured hands, he sighed and tugged at her lightly this time. "It could be worse."
"How?" she asked flatly.
"We're together all the time anyway, right?"
"The only reason that works out so well is that I know I have the option to get the hell away from you if I wanted to." Lifting her imprisoned hand, she stated, "Now we're stuck until we find Meowth and get him to use his claws to unlock these things."
His frown growing, he sat up and looked back over his shoulder at her. "I'm sorry that being my partner is such a chore!"
Jessie rolled her eyes, tilting her head back against the ground and looking at him upside down. "I didn't mean it like that."
"All right, then!" he huffed, trying to position himself to face her, only finding success when she repositioned herself as well. "I'm sorry that being my friend is so awful for you!"
Groaning, she said, "James, if you're going to be a prima donna then I swear I will find some poison ivy and rub it all over your stupid tongue so you shut the hell up!"
He started to cross his arms, only stopping when he saw Jessie almost fall face-first into the dirt. "I just don't understand what the problem is. It won't be very much different from how we are every day."
Jessie pulled her legs up to her chest and rested her head against her knees, giving him a dull stare. "The last time I checked, we didn't go to the bathroom together."
Opening his mouth to reply, he blinked and slowly shut it, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. "I never thought of that."
"Not to mention bathing."
He pursed his lips, quickly looking away from her and into a small, dying bush next to him. "We won't be like this for that long."
"How do you figure that? Because Meowth is so reliable? Please," she snorted.
"We just...we won't! That's all!"
"Great, so we'll be inseparable and smelly. This just keeps getting better."
James bit the inside of his lip, swallowing and only noticing for the first time since their escape just how dry how throat was. "We could close our eyes."
Jessie wrinkled her nose. "No way. You would peek." Pausing but starting again before James could put words to his offended look, she added, "Hell, I would peek."
Blinking again, slowly this time, he shook some of his hair into his face to hide the blush he felt heating up his cheeks. "W - Wh - Why would you do that?"
Raising an eyebrow and smirking slightly at his embarrassment about the subject, she leaned in slightly, a devilish gleam in her blue eyes. "Curiosity."
Shifting awkwardly against the ground and fighting to avoid her gaze, he said quickly, "You know, you're right. This really is a pain in the neck! Or, um..." Laughing nervously, he continued, "the wrist, I suppose. We should start looking for Meowth right now!"
She felt a little bad for being so unbearably amused by him but the feeling was fleeting like most guilt was in her life. "You think he thought to grab our Pokeballs back from the cops?"
"The question isn't whether he thought about it or not...it's whether he cared enough or was able to do it."
Making a face, she nodded slightly in agreement. "Touché." Looking around them, she let out a heavy sigh, body slumping. "We should probably try to find a shelter for the night." She gestured with her free hand up to the sky, prompting James to look. "Sun's starting to set. Not only will it be almost impossible to find Meowth in the dark, but those hell hounds could still be on the hunt."
He made a face similar to hers. "And I'd be willing to bet that they're a bit more stealthy than we are."
"You, you mean." She started to stand and James followed suit, getting to their feet again without incident. "You're the one that kept tripping over everything."
"Because you were pulling me so hard that I couldn't get my balance!" he argued.
Jessie waved a hand in dismissal at him. "You were unbalanced way before we got 'cuffed together." Rolling her eyes again at the sight of his growing pout, she reached for his free hand with hers. "Come on, you big baby. Maybe there's a cave somewhere around here."
After trudging through the forest for hours, the two Rockets gave up their search for a cave and opted instead to crawl into a giant hole in the rotting trunk of one of the massive trees all around them. Caves weren't exactly luxurious but they were better than being cramped together in a dirty tree.
They sat back-to-back for a while, Jessie bemoaning about the bathing situation once again now that they had effectively gotten dirt and various plant parts in places neither wanted to focus too hard on at the moment. It wasn't until James started to explain the intricacies of bottle cap collecting that he felt the back of her head suddenly tap against his, followed by the sound of soft snoring.
He didn't sleep well, taking it upon himself to be Jessie's bodyguard and keep watch for anything that might get them into trouble - at this point, the entire forest seemed like it had it out for them. The last time he woke from a brief nap, the sun was starting to rise, the light inching its way into their hideout the higher it got in the sky.
James yawned and started to stretch but stopped himself before tugging Jessie out of her slumber, the small hope he'd had that yesterday had been a bad dream now squashed to nothingness. Scooting closer to the hole, he poked his head out to get a good look at where they were and figure out just how lost they'd gotten in the night.
He was met with the backs of fifty-some Kakuna hanging lazily from branches too far up to see. Quietly, he sat back against Jessie and began to process their predicament: where there were Kakuna, they were almost always Beedrill; they didn't have the best track record in terms of escaping unscathed from Beedrill attacks as it was and now they were 'cuffed together, making the likelihood of getting out of the situation without getting a stinger through the abdomen even more minuscule than usual. What a way to go - mutilated by a horde of angry bug Pokemon while handcuffed to your best friend.
And he wouldn't even get to see her naked.
Shaken from his thoughts that had now drastically shifted from their painful deaths to what Jessie might look like underneath what little her uniform left to the imagination, James's eyes widened at the sound of Jessie loudly groaning. He tried to reach his free hand around to put over her mouth but ended up poking her in the eye, getting one more string of profanities from her and an elbow in the back.
"Jessie," he hissed, free hand reaching to rub his likely bruising back, "be quiet! There's a bunch of Kakuna out there."
Still groggy and now both cranky and in pain as well, it took her a moment to register what he was saying. "And where there are Kakuna..."
"...There are Beedrill," he finished, both looking out into the brightening day, shadows cast on it from the Pokemon hanging a few feet away.
"How the hell are we supposed to get away from a bunch of fucking Beedrill when we can barely walk without falling on our faces as it is!" she hissed back to him.
"I don't know," he said quietly, resting his head back against hers. "Maybe...maybe we could just wait here until -"
"What? Until it's dark out again?"
James shrugged a little. "We didn't do half bad last night -"
"Only because we found this place early enough. It was still dark but I'd like to see you try to run around this place when it's pitch-black out at two in the morning."
"So, what are you saying? We run for it?"
Jessie sighed, tilting her head to the side and eying the Kakuna with dread. "I guess so."
"Prison is looking a lot better," he said, standing slowly and quietly along with his partner.
Exchanging glances as they stood at the precipice of their own doom, James was surprised when Jessie's fingers brushed against his, entwining them together the best she could in their 'cuffed state. Swallowing hard, he returned the gesture, both catching the other's eye once again only to quickly look away.
Taking a deep breath, they ventured out, trying to carefully maneuver around the immobile Kakuna without alerting any angry family members to their presence. Once they found themselves past the group hanging from the tree that was their shelter, they looked at each other again and grinned.
They cheered at their own stealth, James wrapping his free arm around her waist and picking her up off the ground enough to spin her. When the spinning stopped, they both turned to start on an impalement-free trek only to be met with a single Kakuna dangling in front of them.
Their eyes widened and they froze, barely letting themselves breathe.
"It's mocking us," Jessie whispered, locked in a staring contest with the Pokemon.
"Better it mocks us than alerts the hive..." James replied, glancing at the group they thought they'd escaped and letting out a squeak of horror - each and every one was still as stone, black beady eyes penetrating through them. "Jessie..."
As she turned to look at the scene herself, a loud buzzing could be heard getting closer and closer from the top of the tree, the sound ear-piercing.
They started to run, not waiting around to find out how pissed off the Beedrill were at their existence. The buzzing never stopped and as they ran, in fact, became louder, prompting them to put their hands over their ears - something they could luckily accomplish despite their situation.
Once again running for their lives through a strange forest, they worked better together than they had the day before, hardly stumbling at all and somehow managing to get fewer scratches from branches and plants as well. Coming across a rotting log that blocked their path, they both looked past it to find a small lake with glistening water, not even a ripple on the surface.
"Jump the log and dive in!" Jessie commanded, accomplishing the first part of her task before almost tripping over her own feet at the sudden weight that seemed to drag behind her. Spinning around, she saw James sitting up and rubbing his head after taking a tumble on the log; immediately after, she saw the Beedrill heading for them fast and furious.
It would be odd to her, in retrospect, that in the moment she never thought once about wishing that they weren't stuck together so she could escape, cursing him for being such a useless klutz. Instead, she cried out his name and tackled him back down to the ground, smashing his face into the dirt, laying on top of him and protecting them both as the swarm quickly and loudly buzzed past.
Continuing to hover over him for a few more minutes until the penetrating sound of angry Beedrill was gone, Jessie slowly sat up and let James up, resting back against the log and catching her breath. James simply stared at her, mouth slightly agape - had she just thrown herself on him to protect him from getting an ass full of stinger? The shock he felt quickly faded when he noticed the shimmer of the handcuffs; she had to save him in order to save herself. It was just Jessie being Jessie and thinking of only her own needs. What else was new?
Standing and tugging at the 'cuffs to get her to do the same, he silently started toward the lake, purposely walking in front of her. There was a hot, searing pain in his knee that was likely a result of his fall - he'd rather sit and be miserable and injured in front of a nice lake than in the increasingly restricting forest.
Jessie frowned, trotting to keep up with him, trying to decide whether she should be angry at him for being such a jerk when she'd risked her hide to save his or as hurt and confused as she felt. What the hell did she do wrong? Did he have a death wish or something?
James found a spot near the edge of the lake and made a pained face as he sat, resting against an odd boulder behind him. Jessie sat next to him, nose turned up and head away from him. Her anger was slowly getting the best of her as the more she thought about how much it hurt her feelings that he didn't show any kind of gratitude toward her, the angrier she got that she felt that way in the first place.
"So, what? I don't get a fucking 'thank you'?" she finally asked.
"For what?" James replied, bringing his knee up to his chest and wincing, inspecting the nasty scrape that tore up both his pants and his skin. "Doing what you had to do to protect yourself?"
Jessie jerked her head to look at him, brow furrowed. "I did it to protect you, you idiot! How was I protecting myself when I was the one on you? Those Beedrill would have to get through me first!"
Shifting against the rock, he darted his gaze away from her. "Like you wouldn't have thrown me to them if it came down to that. If we weren't handcuffed together -"
"But we are," she interjected firmly. "We may not be the most loyal group in the world but if I have to stand there and watch someone I care about be potentially stabbed by a stupid Beedrill, I'm damn sure going to do something to avoid that!"
He snorted a little, hair falling in his eyes. "So it's still for your benefit - not mine."
Taken aback by his behavior, she swallowed hard and looked out over the lake. "Who wants to see their best friend die?" she finally said after one of the longest silences they had ever had between them. "I'm sorry that I said all those things yesterday about how awful this was." She paused, lowering her eyes to look at her lap. "It's not. In fact, it sort of reminds me of training." Noticing him turn his head slightly to face her, she continued with a small smile, "We weren't exactly on the best of terms then, either; but when it mattered, we were there for each other and we were better because of it. Yesterday we could barely go anywhere without one of us nearly dislocating the other's shoulder - today it was like..."
"Like we were one person, working together," he finished for her quietly.
She looked back at him and nodded a little, her smile growing. "Yeah. Like that."
Stretching his leg out, he winced again at the sudden onslaught of pain the movement produced. Jessie frowned, leaning over to inspect the knee for herself. Saying nothing, she pulled off the glove from her free hand with her teeth and reached out for the water, dunking it, before pulling it out and holding it to James, gesturing with her head to his free hand.
He was watching her, intrigued more by her silence than the actual act, nodding to her in understanding and taking hold of part of the glove. At the same time, they wrung out the excess water from Jessie's glove and she gently began dabbing the blood and dirt away from his knee.
The pain was almost non-existent to him, watching her intently as she took care of him for the second time that day. His eyes locked on her face, smudged with dirt - her hair a tangled mess of twigs and leaves. Scanning down, he frowned slightly to himself at the various scratches on her stomach and thighs from running through the brush so haphazardly. She hadn't complained about any of them once so far and, in fact, put his needs ahead of her own for the first time in -
He swallowed hard, looking at her once again as she cleaned his wound, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth ever-so-slightly in concentration. The last time she really and truly put herself in harm's way for no other reason than for him was during training. His cheeks starting becoming warm at the memory of landing on her, breathless, inches away from throwing caution to the wind and kissing her.
Blinking himself out of his thoughts, he continued to stare at her as she looked at her glove, nose wrinkled, and shrugged, tossing it over her shoulder into the lake.
His lips starting moving almost on their own, a sudden wave of panic rushing through him as he realized he had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth. "Thank you," he said quietly.
Jessie looked up at him and smiled, shrugging her shoulders again. "It's just a scrape."
James shook his head, sitting up straighter and leaning forward toward her. "I mean...for everything."
"You're only saying that because I made you feel bad," she said with a smirk.
Shaking his head again, more fervidly this time, he lifted his free hand to her cheek. "I'm saying it...because you should hear it."
Staring into his eyes, she found herself leaning in toward him as well. "What else do you think I should hear?" she asked, her voice soft.
He could feel her breath against his lips, her hand reaching out and clutching his jacket to pull him closer. He couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted something so much. Even the lake seemed to come to life with the prospect of what had been far too many years coming. Both of their eyes falling shut, their lips barely had the chance to brush against each other's when those eyes shot back open again and looked out at the lake.
The sound of rushing water came from the depths of the lake, accompanied by a vicious roaring sound that jogged both of their memories - much to their dismay. Before they could think to get to their feet and make another run for it, an angry Gyarados broke the calm surface, the roar that had been muffled by the water now echoing loudly through the trees.
"What did we do?!" James cried, using the rock behind him to help stand up. "We didn't do anything!"
Rising along with James, Jessie squinted her eyes at the raging Gyarados - there, atop its head, was her dirty and bloodied glove. Dropping both arms to her sides, she managed to get out, "oh, fuck" before a wild whirlpool was formed by the angry Pokemon, coming full-speed toward land.
James tried to return the favor that Jessie had done for him by dragging her away from the lake's edge as fast as he could - but the whirlpool was too fast and too powerful.
When the water receded, the Gyarados roared once again in accomplishment, the partners laying on the grass not far from the lake, unconscious, drenched from head to toe. Its job done, it shook the glove off its head and jumped up into the air, diving back into the deep waters of the lake to hopefully be left alone for a while.
It was around lunchtime when Jessie's eyes slowly opened, consciousness gradually returning to her. She sat up and put her hand to her head, groaning. She stopped abruptly and looked at the hand she had just used, noting the handcuff still around her wrist but the chain connecting her to James now severed, twisted and warped into breaking during the attack. A wide grin spread across her face and she looked next to her at a still-unconscious James, his wrist sporting the same accessory hers did.
Crawling over to him, she shook him gently before proceeding to pound on his chest with her fist. A gurgling noise could be heard after a few thumps and James opened his eyes, some water dribbling from his mouth as he coughed.
Once he got his bearings, Jessie happily showed him her wrist and he looked to his, unable to keep the look of disappointment from showing on his face briefly before trying to return her smile. "It's...it's a good thing that attack broke the handcuffs..."
Nodding a little, she bit her lip slightly and looked away from him. "We were so close to doing something incredibly stupid..."
He nodded as well, turning his head in the other direction away from her. "Really...really stupid."
They sat in an awkward silence for the second-longest time in the many years they'd been friends before Jessie stood and wrung out her hair. James stood as well and stretched his now-free arm out, an ache from all the odd positions and falls in the last day making itself known.
Again they were silent, standing in front of each other, trying to look anywhere but at their counterpart. Jessie was the first to crack, taking a quick glance at him and biting her lip again, harder this time. With purpose, she went to James and grabbed the hand that had been 'cuffed with her own freed one, making James jump and immediately look down at their interlocking fingers. He looked up at her and smiled at the sight of her playful grin, his heart fluttering when she winked at him.
"Lucky for us, we've proved on more than one occasion that we are incredibly stupid," she said, leaning in and giving him a quick kiss on the lips.
James blinked at her when she pulled back, his smile growing as he placed his hand on the small of her back and pulled her against him, his hand squeezing hers as he tilted his head to the side and leaned in, lips softly brushing up against hers. She murmured against his lips, her hand lifting to the back of his head, urging him to deepen the kiss, fingers tangling in his already disheveled hair.
Clumsily, they found their way to a nearby tree without breaking apart, James pressing her against the rough bark and receiving moan of approval in return, her tongue parting his lips and rubbing against his inside his mouth. She half-moaned, half-groaned when he broke the kiss and went to his knees, planting kisses down her scraped torso. Running his hands down her sides, he slid them both under her skirt, rubbing them against the back of her thighs. She bit her lip again to try to keep her sounds of anticipation and pleasure quiet, one hand reaching back to attempt to steady herself against the tree while the other went back into his hair.
His hands traveled from her thighs to her ass, cupping it gently at first and then squeezing, part of him honestly expecting her to smack the shit out of him for it; instead, she arched her back, pushing her hips forward, trying to get her message across without simply shoving his face where she needed it most - not that she wouldn't do it if she had to.
Moving from her ass, he gripped her panties, running his thumbs inside them along the waistline. Jessie didn't bother holding in her increasingly frustrated moan, tugging at his hair. He began to pull her panties down slowly - agonizingly - and she tilted her head back against the tree trunk, opening her eyes with a gasp at the sensation of his hot breath against her.
Suddenly, something in the tree above moved, the sight and sound barely registering in her head that was now swimming with the desperate need for her partner. Another rustling of leaves above her head made her tune back in to the world around her, blinking up at the three Weedle that were inching their way across a branch. Eyes widening, she used her grip on James's hair to tug his head away from her and pull him back to his feet.
He frowned at her and followed her gaze just in time to see several Kakuna drop from seemingly out of nowhere.
The two would-be lovers immediately looked at each other and, both too shocked and too annoyed at the horrible cock-block they were experiencing to use logic, they shrieked and both fumbled with Jessie's panties, trying to pull them back up together until Jessie smacked his hand away and did it herself.
Their formerly 'cuffed hands clasped together, they took off just as the same deafening buzzing started up again.
Running again for the third time in twenty-four hours, James couldn't help but state the obvious before focusing on getting away without a Beedrill stinger in him:
"We shouldn't have sex against or around trees from now on."