This is just a random little Christmas one-shot I've written for a contest on another site, and I thought I'd share here for the fun of it. Hope you all enjoy. Note: language and content may be triggering for some
The Centre appeared in the distance like a shimmering neon mirage. Nestled between a cliff face on one side and the gaping mouth of Mount Moon on the other, with snow piled around like giant clumps of dandruff, the orange light above the entrance called out to Perry, signalling for him in the darkness.
It was a call he was all too happy to answer. There was nowhere else for him to go in the snow-strewn stone corridors he had found himself in, and Perry lacked the stamina to make it on to the next possible refuge. He had apparently left any sense of energy or willpower back in Unova, leaving him with only aching thighs and an unhelpful jacket as survival.
The winter storm was enough to push him onwards, the breeze the firm kick in the arse he needed. Perry stumbled and slipped up the icy slope, weighed down by Brian's frozen feathers, but he carried on, eyes locked on the glowing Poké Ball as though he was having a staring contest with a cyclops, and fuck that mythical bitch if it thought he was giving up.
Perry barely noticed the welcoming chime, but he felt the welcoming warmth that stroked his face as soon as the doors slid open. Glowing light engulfed him, and in a moment of frost-induced delusion, Perry shut his eyes and tilted his head back. "Arceus, my body is ready for you."
"What the fuck did you just say?"
The heavenly moment was shot down and Perry crashed back down to earth, no angel wings to carry him. He opened his eyes and gazed at the sight before him. He had never imagined heaven having smudged green linoleum floors and off-white chairs with the stuffing falling out, but he'd take it.
"Help me, Nurse Joy, you're my only hope." And with the least graceful groan ever, Perry tilted forwards, one final feeble squawk from Brian the last thing he heard.
Look who's come crawling home for Christmas… I guess that town didn't need another fucking faggot after all… Well we don't want you here… Get out of here you pansy little bitch. You heard me, OUT!
"If you are going to insist on talking in your sleep, would you mind whispering? I'm not interested in anyone's dreams but my own, thanks."
Perry groaned as he blinked back into consciousness. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the artificial light and jumped as something moved around his waist. Heart racing, he realised it was only a blanket falling from his waist; he leant forward to retrieve it, but his shoes squealed against the sticky floor and he decided it was probably better there.
"Is someone here?"
"Yeah, your fairy fucking godmother. You get one wish, and your only choice is to bugger off back where you came."
Still half asleep, Perry swivelled about in the chair and peered towards the counter, where a shock of blue hair was moving around near the machines. "Oh thank god you're real. For a second there I thought my nihilism had gotten so bad my subconscious was starting to berate me."
The hair smirked. "That's cute, you thought of that little line a while ago?"
"Maybe," Perry shrugged, stumbling to his feet. His clothes were still wet from the melted snow, but he could feel the rejuvenating effects of the Centre's central heating in work already. "I am a writer, after all."
"A writer, eh? Yet you couldn't think of a name for a Braviary that wasn't Brian?" The hair turned towards him, revealing a thin, elfin face buried beneath a layer of foundation and silver eyeshadow at odds with the pale arms crossed against the ample chest.
"Brian was a gift," Perry said defensively before a wave of guilt washed over him. "How is he?" He whispered, rushing for the counter.
The girl stepped backwards, scowling at his closeness, but her expression softened as she tapped away at a screen. "Vital signs are normal, all scans revealed no serious issues. At worst, it is a mild case of hypothermia, but I will confidently diagnose a case of idiot trainer flying a Pokémon susceptible to the cold through a fucking blizzard."
"Oh praise Articuno for that, I was so worried there for – hey!" Perry folded his arms sternly. "That's so totally uncalled for!"
The girl folded her own arms and slid backwards, manicured eyebrow raised in a triumphant smirk. "Is it? I think any sane trainer would have known to have waited for it to pass, or, you know, flown a bit earlier."
"I didn't have that option, thank you very much, Judgy McJudgeface!" Perry snapped. "I mean, I could have flown earlier, but I didn't want to, and then when I finally made up my mind –"
"Whatever mate, I didn't ask for your life story. I'm just waiting for your bird to be better so you can fuck off and carry on your merry cherry way."
Perry's face sank. "Oh… I thought there were rooms here for trainers."
"Oh for the love of…" The girl groaned and turned back around, eyes rolling. "Surely you were flying somewhere on purpose, or did you nearly kill your bird for shits and giggles?"
"I am going somewhere but… I don't know if I want to go." He couldn't be sure with all that makeup covering her face, but Perry had an inkling he was at least a few years older than the girl. Yet he could not look her in the eye as he said that; what sort of grown man admits to a child he is too afraid to go home for the holidays?
His embarrassment seemed to be the least of her problems. "Fine. Just fucking fine, give me more work to do."
"I can go if it's too much trouble."
"No, its fine, I love having my holidays shat all over." The girl glanced up from the screen and shot him a withering look before returning and tapping away.
"Well, thanks for your help, um…" Perry paused and leant forwards.
"Do you mind not staring at my tits, you perv."
"I'm not interested."
"Bitch, just cause your clearly gay doesn't give you the right to stare at my boobs."
"I was looking at your name tag, um," Perry ignored the icy stare and leant forwards again, "Trixie. Hello, I'm Perry."
Trixie rolled her eyes again, making sure he noticed. "Whatever. Do you have any preference for a room, cause literally all of them are free. Most people aren't dumb enough to come near a mountain in the heart of winter. Or is this as far away from your problems as you could get?" She added, smiling cockily at him.
Perry suddenly felt so hot he expected steam to rise from his clothes. "You know what, I'm done talking with you! I want to talk to a nurse."
Trixie straightened up instantly, lips disappearing into her mouth. "I am a nurse."
"Oh," Perry mumbled, feeling his brief moment of pride wither away. "I just assumed you weren't."
"Assumed why?"
"Well, don't you…" Perry could tell already by Trixie's violently raised eyebrow that this was a bad idea, but he could not find the will to stop himself. "Don't you need p-p-pink hair to… work… here?" He spluttered out the last few words, hoping it would dull the impact, but when he un-squinted his eyes, the damage was clearly done.
"Wow. Wow." Trixie leant backwards, arms crossed, and her deep, slow intake of breath echoed through the room. "This is the type of bullshit I don't need to deal with today. You can't just come in here with this racist crap and expect me to heal your Pokémon because you're too fucking stupid to notice how cold it is outside. I should throw your skinny arse back into the snow and let the Golbat come for you."
Her voice echoed, underlining just how empty and cold the room really was. Perry didn't want to look her in the eye, but she was staring right at him and he didn't want to show her his back, not when there were probably a million medically-inspired things she could do to him.
Finally, after a moment; "Is it racism?"
"It might as well be," Trixie huffed, her hair quivering like blue grass caught in a breeze.
"I think that's kind of appropriating a cause that isn't your own when you could just say you're offended."
"Fuck you, don't tell me how I should feel." Trixie finally looked away, the sound of keys being angrily smashed deafening in the confined space. "Motherfucker didn't even thank me for the blanket," she muttered obviously, eyes flickering icily between him and the screen.
Perry moved to the end of the counter and leant against the wall. He didn't want to meet Trixie's eyes so instead he stared out into the lobby. Unfortunately, it was as dull as a rural Pokémon Centre could be: tatty furniture, tatty floor, dated posters on a wall that hadn't seen a paint job in several centuries. There was a single pot plant in the corner that looked like a beheaded Exeggutor, and it was the sole sad centrepiece of Christmas decorations. Red tinsel was wrapped around it before rising limply up the ceiling, where it hung unevenly around clumps of plant that certainly wasn't mistletoe.
Something shiny caught his eye, and Perry nervously approached the tree, not wanting to get snapped at again. A few baubles had been taped to the tree, but it was one at the back, glitterier than all the others, that grabbed his attention.
Mum's probably got ones just like these. Perry grabbed the decoration and examined his reflection; his long nose and shaggy quiff were distorted into the bulb, while his cheeks were an unavoidable shade of red. I probably could have shaved for her. She would have appreciated that. I look too twinky without my beard though, and god knows dad doesn't need any more reason to shit all over me. This scarf is probably going to give him a heart attack as it is.
"Do you mind not touching those?"
Perry straightened up and stepped away, hands raised. "Sorry."
"Some little brats tore them all off the other day and I am not putting them back up," Trixie fumed into her screen.
Perry could understand the pain but didn't want to belittle her. Instead, he gently nodded and slid away back to where he had woken up. He grabbed the blanket off the floor and cautiously approached the counter. "Thanks for this."
"I may treat Pokémon but I'm still a nurse, blue hair and all," Trixie added coldly. "Couldn't just let you die at my entrance."
"Well, it's very appreciated, I –"
"There are enough forms to fill out if a Pokémon dies, let alone a trainer."
"Ah." Perry fell silent. Suddenly being back home didn't seem like such a terrible idea after all. At least there he knew why people hated his presence.
"I need your trainer card."
"For the room? I don't think I'll be taking that anymore."
Trixie sighed staring coldly at the counter, hand outstretched. "I'm still treating your Pokémon, dipshit. Need to get your history."
"Do you treat all your customers like this?" Perry asked as he shoved the chunk of plastic across the counter.
"Only when they interrupt my quiet time as much as you have," Trixie shot back, grabbing the card with long pink nails.
The sound of her typing rang out briefly, followed quickly by a sudden pause. Perry didn't think much of it, but then a quiet snigger exploded into a rapturous guffaw, and suddenly Trixie was roaring with laughter.
"Is something wro – oh no." Perry realised what was happening and wondered if it was too late to go back in the snow.
"Holy fuck, is this seriously your real name?"
"Oh fuck me." Perry's head sank into his hands.
"Peregrine? Peregrine Diggory? Is that made up?"
"No," Perry groaned, a groan that only deepened as Trixie whooped in delight.
"Oh sweet merciful lord, it's a Christmas fucking miracle!" She clapped her hands together and did some sort of jig in her happiness. "My lord, what wizarding school did you crawl out of?"
"Very funny."
"So did you lose all the other hobbits out in the storm?"
"Please stop."
"I think you might have to double check with my weed dealer that he hasn't already trademarked that as one of his strains."
"Fuck, can you stop? Now do you see why I hate my parents!"
Perry froze a second too late. He thought it had been quiet before, but compared to the sudden silence that now gripped the room, a full symphonic orchestra may as well have been playing before. Trixie's fingers hovered awkwardly above the keys, her blue hair dropping over her face. Beeps and clicks from the machines behind the counter rang out as blatantly as a motor car rally, while the whistling wind shuddered the building.
The moment passed, but it lingered in the background. Trixie went back to typing, but her fingers moved slower and quieter, and no spite came from her side of the counter. Perry wanted to say something witty and clever to break the tension, but as the seconds stretched on in to minutes, he remained silently sad.
Well, Chris, I guess you win the argument after all. Perry shut his eyes and he was back in their loft in Virbank City, his boyfriend's handsome face swimming before him. He often dreamt of those chiselled, if bland, movie star looks, but the youthful face before him now was twisted in a type of rage Chris could never replicate on camera.
"What was that, why did you just stand there gawping at him? He's the head of the fucking studio, Perry! Why do you have to be so awkward all the goddamn fucking time! You're never going to convince anyone to promote you if you can't react like a normal human!"
Nearly twelve hours later, the words still cut deep. If Perry had waited long enough to pack anything, he might have thrown his laptop into the ocean somewhere between the two regions, yet thankfully he'd been too hurt and confused to grab a spare change of clothes let alone his life's work. It was safe at home for now, if that dingy riverside shithole even was home anymore. Instead, Perry had only those words to carry with him, and they were heavy enough as it was.
"Everything here seems to check out." Trixie's words pulled Perry out of his despair, and he turned to find his card waiting on the counter. "Brian's medical records have been updated. He should be fine to fly again soon, but you should take him for a check-up in Vermillion when you get there. I imagine that's where you're going, yeah?"
"Thanks." Perry grabbed his card, ignoring the question. "Can I see him?"
"Not yet," Trixie said, lips pursed. She leant back against one of the machines, arms folded tightly, and Perry had a feeling where this was going. "I probably shouldn't pry like this, but given that you came stumbling into my centre with a nearly frozen Pokémon in your arms, I feel like I've earned some medical right to pry."
"I'm really not in the mood for –" Perry began, but Trixie spoke briskly over him,
"You don't want to go home to Christmas for some reason – wild stab in the closet, but I'm going to go with 'coming out issues' – so you planned to stay in Virbank living out some dream of working for PokeStar Studios. Yet something happened in the last day or so – script rejected, got fired, fight with a lover or roommate – so you hop on poor old Brian and fly across the ocean without a second thought because home seems like the only option right now.
"But, being a 'writer'," she said with dramatic air quotes, "rather than a proper trainer, you don't think about your Pokémon's well being, just your own, and decide to keep flying until you reach your destination. Brian manages to reach land, but from some combination of exhaustion and cold, he crash lands right over the mountain, and now here we are. That sound about right to you, or have I just let my imagination run away with me?"
Perry didn't say anything. He was trying too hard not to cry. He stared pointedly at the pathetic tree, but he could feel Trixie's eyes boring into him, heating the back of his neck. He bit down on his cheek to try and quell the tears but hot streaks of despair spilt down his face a second later.
"You know, I have never understood why people get so worked up about going home for Christmas." Trixie spoke a tone as though the thought had already occurred to her, but there was a touch of venom in her voice which suggested otherwise. "It's a fake arse holiday anyway. I mean, some wannabe disciple of Arceus a million fucking years ago claims to have brought man and Pokémon together for one night, so now we've got to buy shitty presents and see people we hate once a year? Fuck that bullshit.
"First of all, if it did happen, it sure as shit didn't happen in winter. There were Mareep in that manger where Saint bloody Christopher held that mass, allegedly. What sort of shepherd keeps their Mareep around in the middle of winter? So that part is probably a load of hooey, but whatever, ancient cunts believed it, that's on them. But why do we still care about it? It's all about commercialisation and it always has been, actually. Ancient tribes used it as an excuse to get drunk on Lum berries or whatever, it was never about religion for them – and they were the ones who prayed!
"So what's the fucking point of putting us through this all? No one prays to Arceus anymore. I don't need some kinky gold horse to help me deal with my life and neither does anyone else. It's all just some corporate shitshow that has become imbued in our culture and we torture ourselves every year trying to live up to some advertising company's idea of how this twenty-four period is supposed to go."
"Fuck, would you just shut up!" Perry turned so violently a stream of snot flung out from his nose, but he was too angry to care. He slammed his fists on the counter and leered towards Trixie, who jolted backwards. "Just because you're trapped in some shitty little box at the bottom of a shitty little mountain doesn't mean that you get to shit over everyone else's shitty lives! Christmas is a pointless and moronic tradition, but the whole point of it is that there isn't a bloody point. It's so embedded in us because if we didn't have it, what other reason would we have to see family members we don't like anymore? Do you think I want to get abused by my father or judged by my mother? Of course not, but if I didn't have Christmas, I would just hide out in Virbank for the rest of my life doing my best to avoid them and we'd all just grow old and die and nothing would ever change. I've been beating myself up enough over whether or not it was worth coming back and facing all that shit again, and in the end a few moments of possible awkwardness with some dickhead relatives isn't enough to ruin seeing people I care about and having a nice meal and having one day of the year where I don't have to think about how miserable the rest of my life is, and I don't need some cuntish temp with a bad dye job making this even worse."
Perry nearly sank to the floor as the words stopped pouring from his mouth. He felt he had just released every bit of energy he had into the world, drained as he was from spewing all that anger across the counter. Yet maybe this was just relief, the lightness he felt simply the loss of the weight he had been carrying around his whole life. A part of him was now in the air, words thrown into the room never to rest on his shoulders again.
For a moment, Perry felt glorious, but then he looked at Trixie. Her face seemed to be all eyes, wide and angry above her tight, thin lips; they were locked onto him, big green pools of anger shimmering like liquid electricity. Her fingers gripped her side of the counter like a vice, the veins on her arms three dimensional with hatred. Perry straightened up and prepared himself for whatever onslaught would come next, but when Trixie finally parted her teeth, raising them slowly like the gates of a castle, her voice was quiet, her words blunt and scorned.
"I'm not a temp, you arsehole. I run this whole centre on my own."
She turned and plunged herself through a set of double doors. The nurse moved so quickly that Perry wasn't sure if they were her shoes squeaking on the sticky tiles or a faint sigh of despair breaking through her manicured fortress. Whatever the sound was, Perry was left alone with it, listening to the echo against the howl of the wind. He looked at the doors he had stumbled through and saw only darkness, no snow or flakes pouring past, merely a small pile stacked carelessly against the glass.
Of all the miserable places in all the miserable world, we had to fall here. The loneliness of the unmanned counter began to unsettle him, so Perry walked around the lobby. This was what he had wanted to escape, this crushing feeling that had followed him through Vermillion until the day he sailed to Castelia. This dark, miserable feeling that was like a shadow cast over your reflection. The feeling that you were trapped inside a big box with nothing waiting for you outside except cold and darkness.
I was never alone in Virbank. Not physically, at least. There were Shelley and Sophie and Tim and Eli, there was work, there was hope… there was Chris. Perry paused by a poster advertising the league. He stared at Red's dark, edgy eyes, the light perfectly capturing the brown flint like chocolate in them; they were so much like Chris', but at least the Champion was posing, this little moment of intensity merely a front rather than a whole being.
Blinking back tears, Perry stepped away and nearly became entangled in the tinsel. It was hanging like a noose from the light fitting and Perry had to bat it away. "Who the fuck thought that was a good idea – oh… right…" Perry looked around as he straightened the tinsel; he looked at the lights, the baubles, the miserable tree. Something about the scene didn't feel right, and reached out to the glittery baubles again, his fingers stroking the surface.
"Why do we still care about it," he whispered, watching as blue flakes fell from the bauble at his touch, a sudden sense of completion settling over him.
"Bra Vi!"
"Brian!" Perry made to run to the counter, but the Braviary soared towards him instead, giant wings looking cramped inside the tiny lobby. Perry laughed as the bird collided with him, sharp talons scratching his stomach, but he wouldn't give up the warm embrace of his true friend for anything.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you through all that. Can you ever forgive me?"
Brian said nothing, simply hugging him tighter, and Perry smiled. He knew his friend would understand; he knew the whole story, had been there for so much of this. Perry thought of how happy his mother would be to see the Braviary, and the thought filled him with sadness.
"He should be good enough for you to fly now. I mixed a few berries with an ice heal and it seems to have done the trick. If you need me to call the Vermillion Centre for you, I can."
Perry pushed Braviary's wings away with his face so he could see Trixie again. Her eyes were still narrow, her voice still filled with contempt, but there was a softness to her scowl now, a quietness in her eyes that her narrowed lids could not hide.
"Thanks, but I think we should stay here tonight. He won't have much time to recover if we head out there again straight away."
Trixie nodded knowingly. "Well, you clearly aren't as shit as I had pegged you for."
Perry laughed and moved Brian to the seat before going for the blanket. "I should have that on my tombstone, would be better than anything my family could think of."
Trixie briefly smirked. "There are blankets in the rooms, you don't need that."
"Oh, I'm fine out here." Perry smiled as he threw the blanket over his shoulders and headed back to the seat. "Merry Christmas."
"Ew," Trixie groaned, and she turned away herself, stepping under the tinsel and baubles that hung from the machines.
Perry smiled to himself as he sank into the seat, not fooled by her mask anymore, but he was done fighting it. He had been fighting himself all day, and right now he just wanted to relax. As he faced the door, Perry thought of the two places he could call home; if he could choose to step through that darkness and back into one of them, he didn't know which one he wanted more. This was enough right now, sitting here with Brian, surrounded by Trixie's baubles. He couldn't hide in the mountain's shadow forever, but if the world outside was still dark tomorrow, at least he belonged here with Brian, huddled under a thin blanket on an off-white chair, his shoes still sticky from the floor.