Title: Muspelheim
Warning: NSFW
A/N: Hey all,

This little plot bunny had been bouncing around my head for a long while now. Keep in mind that this takes place eight years after the game, so Gold is eighteen, and Silver is nineteen. Gold, having lived out his dreams, has finally settled down and taken up the occupation of a breeder. And Silver, after helping his father redeem himself, has begun searching each and every corner of the world for new and powerful pokémon.

Premise is pokémon games. Not manga, and not anime, and it's not an AU.

It will eventually incline towards Silver x Gold, but as I prefer to develop relationships, rather than just jump into them, that won't be for a few chapters, at the very least. No Uke or Seme roles, either. I'm previously from western fandoms, so those terms have been driven out of my head for realisms sake.

Feedback/suggestions are much loved. 3

Note: This will get darker in future chapters. It's first and foremost a drama, but there will be romance introduced eventually.

Note 2: much thanks to my kindly beta!

"It's evening."

"So?"

"You've been out here since early morning."

"And you would know this, how, exactly?"

When Silver responded to the query with a dismissive grunt, Gold — who was sitting on his hands and knees before the other boy, tending to an infant pokémon — allowed them to lapse into a serene silence.

Twilight winds cut through the trees surrounding his pokémon care center and assaulted them in the most pleasant of ways. It gently ruffled their clothes and brought fine white hairs to standing point on their necks. Goosebumps ran up Gold's bare arms, but he didn't mind, and regarded the icy winds as a pleasant change from the boiling hot weather he was most accustomed to.

His knees became slick with dirt when he bent over to wrap his arms around the baby pokémon that had been put under his care. It was a tiny Horsea, no larger than his hand. As soon as he brought it up to his chest, it began to curl into itself, and into his stained wife beater in the process.

He turned his head up at Silver and beckoned him over, as he often did when the other boy was present. Which honestly, wasn't often these days. Over the course of two years, Silver had visited him without fail during the second week of every month. It wasn't as regular as Gold wanted, as he was liable to get lonely during the long intervals of time, but it was better than the years during which they'd tensely visited each other for a friendly battle every few months after their regular schedule of Thursday and Tuesday had lost it's appeal.

Silver obligingly strode closer by a couple of steps, and Gold looked up, pulled out of his thoughts. "Great," he grit out awkwardly when Gold presented the nervous pokémon.

It shied away from Silver and buried itself deeper into the flimsy frantic of Gold's shirt. "And here I thought you'd call it weak," Gold teased. "It was born about a week ago. The mother's trainer ought to return soon."

Silver nodded, but didn't comment. He bent down to closely inspect the infant pokémon. "Haven't you already looked after one of these?"

"Yeah," Gold shrugged. "Actually, that was my own pokémon."

"What level is it now?"

"Oh, uh ..." Gold still trained and collected pokémon as per Professor Oak's request, but did so from within the confines of his breeding centre. Traveling around the various different regions no longer held the same allure as it had during his adolescent years. After almost a decade of travelling on his lonesome, he'd decided to settle down and take up his deceased grandparents' breeding house.

He shrugged, petting the Horsea. "Still in the single digits, I think," he admitted with a sheepish grin. "I'm still the best, though. Don't forget that."

Silver made a sound akin to a scoff. "We haven't tested that theory in a while," he said as his fingers absentmindedly lingered over the pokéball hatchets on his belt.

Gold noticed this, but didn't comment. No doubt he would come out the victor if they were to battle. After all, he had his powerful Typhlosion to rely on, the one that had completely dominated the famous Pokémon Master, Red. No one could possibly beat him. He clenched his fists, suppressing a blithe grin at the thought of facing Silver again.

Having noticed Gold's slight change in demeanor, Silver slipped a hand under the flaps of his coat and selected a pokéball. By now, he appeared to automatically know which ball held what pokémon (something that pleased Gold to no end). Proof that he had developed as a trainer, as years prior, he'd had to glance at them before making a selection.

Gold hopped up, turned on his heel, and called out for his roaming fire pokémon. When it rolled out of a nearby patch of grass upon hearing his call, he turned back around, tucking Horsea under his arm in the process. "Alright!" he yelled. "Six on six. Let's do this!"

Silvers lips quirked up into an almost unidentifiable smirk. "Let's," he said, shifting into a battling stance.

"Just like old times, eh?"

"Not at all."

Silver tried to cover his exhaustion, but Gold could see his chest heaving beneath his vinyl trench coat. Odd, one battle, and he was already reduced to a panting mess? Had he been pushing himself too hard recently? Were his pokémon tired, too? It hadn't been a fair battle, if that was the case.

After praising Typhlosion on a job well done, he resumed staring at Silver with what might have passed as a concerned expression. "Hey," he said eventually, when Silver failed to notice he was scrutinizing him. "Do you want a glass of water or something? You look, uh," he motioned uselessly with a hand. "Kinda' unwell."

Silver immediately snapped up his pokéballs and shoved them deep into his pockets, scowling, irate, at the kindly offer. Apparently, he hadn't changed much in eight years after all. "I'm fine," he assured Gold. "It was a…" a shrug. "Good battle."

Which he'd lost, Gold refrained from pointing out. Instead, he smiled, accepting Silver's half-assed compliment.

"You've gotten stronger," he murmured while maneuvering Horsea out from under his arm. Upon being removed from its dark crevice, it shivered, letting out a quiet whine, which made Gold's chest flutter with appreciation.

"Not strong enough yet," Silver replied, a little stunted in his words. Gold suspected he'd meant to say 'to beat you', but again, didn't allow his mammoth ego to get the best of him. He wanted the few times Silver came over to visit him to be pleasant memories, not times riddled with bitter arguments as to who was the better trainer (though it was obvious, in his opinion!).

"Well, they're not weak, in any case."

"I suppose…"

"No really, you've trained them well."

Silver seemed unsatisfied with that answer.

Now Gold could remember why their annual matches had eventually stopped. After a while, he had started feeling irked by the way Silver would avoid chatting after their battles, as if he was silently criticizing himself for being weak and too busy doing so to respond to any of Gold's after match speeches.

"Come on, Sil." He received a heated glare at the use of Silver's nickname. "Get inside. Have a cup of water of somethin'. Sick or not, you look like crap."

"Gee," Silver said dryly. "Thank you."

Gold offered him a sheepish grin to try to rectify his mistake. "Well, not that bad, but you could use some water, right? This is kinda out of your way, after all," he said on his way back towards his little vine embezzled house. "There's pokémon food, too, if you want to give your 'mons a snack before you leave."

There was a moment of silence on Silver's part, and Gold looked over his shoulder, puzzled. "What?" he asked, noting Silver's pensive look. "Something wrong?"

"No, ehm…"

"You're a terrible liar," Gold teased as he placed Horsea in a nearby pool of water.

"Perhaps because I don't lie regularly," Silver muttered with an accusing leer.

Gold grimaced. So he still remembered that one incident back in New Bark Town? Jeeze, they'd both been fourteen at the time, and he'd told Silver that Lyra had called him 'hot' as a joke. Which wasn't true, not in the least bit, but it'd been a joke, and he hadn't thought the other boy confident enough to approach the girl he liked.

Well, not anymore, but they'd been very hormonal at that age. Gold could still remember waking up in the morning with wet boxers, or even worse, pimples. Those had plagued him for the majority of his teenybopper years, and occasionally re-appeared when he neglected to shower for days on end due to an overwhelming workload. It seemed Silver had, for the most part, grown out of his own acne, though he'd had it even worse than Gold a few years prior.

"One time," Gold muttered, guilty. And then raised a finger, waving it like the pendulum in a grandfather clock. "You seriously know how to hold a grudge!"

Silver continued to leer, "I only hold them when I have a reason to."

"Not a very good reason."

"You would say that, wouldn't you."

Gold quirked an eyebrow, "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked incredulously.

"Doesn't matter," Silver said, and entered Gold's house. He closed the door behind him so Gold almost ran straight into it.

Scowling, the smaller of the two boys let himself inside, and huffily made his way over to the sink where he proceeded to sloppily pour his guest a glass of cool water.

"I could have done it myself," Silver stated as he nevertheless accepted the glass. He drained its contents in one breath, and then passed it back, silently demanding more. Of course, Gold wouldn't deny his request. Not even while annoyed by his standoffish attitude. He turned back to the sink and refilled the glass, sliding it over the counter, towards Silver once it had been filled to the brim.

"So," Gold started conversationally. "Where have your adventures been taking you?"

Silver diverted his gaze. "Places," he replied.

"Oh, cool," he said, trying to filter out any traces of annoyance. "Uh, so what places?"

"Around Kanto."

"Anywhere in particular?"

"Nowhere worth mentioning."

There were times that Gold felt on the verge of shaking his pal, Silver, and this was one of those times. Was a straight answer really too much to ask for?

"Well, this has been a fun and enlightening conversation," he said wryly, leaning over the counter. "Come on, share a little. Where have you been?"

Silver placed his glass aside and fingered his wrist, and that's when Gold noticed the bandage wrapped around it. The long sleeve of his jacket obscured it almost completely, but he had seen enough bandages over the years to identify them from even a single, tiny, almost insignificant sliver. There was blood dotted on it, too. He frowned at the other boy. "Climbing mountains?" he asked. "Taking on trainers of the physical sort?" Motioned towards the wrist. "Didn't face the rock gym leader again, did you?"

"No," Silver snapped, disgruntled by Gold's persistence. "My life is none of your business. Stop asking."

"That isn't fair. I tell you all about my adventures." Not that there was much to tell, these days.

"About your babies? They're weak pokémon. I don't care to hear about them," he said, slipping back into that old, miserable little habit of verbally expressing his hatred for weak pokémon.

Gold almost rolled his eyes. Not this again. "Let's not start," he huffed. "This always ends the same."

"What?" Silver suddenly turned on him, moving in closer. "What do you mean by that?"

The close proximity panicked Gold, but he held his ground. Silver hadn't pushed him around in years. He doubted the other boy was going to return to doing so after putting so much effort into their friendship.

"You and your thing with weak pokémon," he managed to force out. "It's ridiculous. They might be weak in the beginning, but they're babies—of course they're going to be weak! Regardless, you should treat them with respect. All pokémon deserve it."

Silver opened his mouth, struggling to form words. "They're of no use to me if they can't find the strength to win. I need them for that purpose." He paused for a moment, before going on to say, "I respect them. My pokémon. Have no doubts about that, Gold." A glare. "We'll battle again later."

"Is that your way of proving your respect?" Gold asked, and he knew it was out of line, but he didn't much care.

Silver's jaw tightened. "I don't need to prove it."

"Yes, you do." Gold's conscience attacked him when he noticed the slight twitch developing beneath Silver's eyes. "But not to me," he finished.

"You're not seriously implying that I need to prove it to myself, are you?"

"Er, well…"

"Dork."

Gold laughed. "Does that still come as a surprise? I'm a great dork. The greatest."

"Hmph," Silver huffed, but he seemed pleased by the change in conversation.

"I'll take that as an agreement," Gold said with a grin. "Do you want something to eat?"

Considered for only a second. "No. I've got to get going. Professor Elm is expecting me."

"Oh." He hadn't heard from Professor Elm in almost a year.

"It's nothing serious," Silver assured him. "I'm picking up a folder."

"Containing what sort of information…?"

"Keep your nose out of my personal life, Gold."

With that, he turned on his heel and sped out of the house. Gold tried to catch up to him, but Silver had already reached the footpath by the time he managed to throw open the front door.

"Silver!" he cupped his hands around his mouth. "You better come back earlier this time."

No response, but he hoped the other boy had heard his request. There was only so long he could go without having someone human to chat to.