Suggestive content.
Johannes gazed out into the darkened woods, running his fingertips along Viola's side absently. The Gardevoir was sleeping soundly on his lap, having turned in early after a Trainer a few hours earlier had accosted them, demanding a battle. He took his chin in his free hand and sighed. It was autumn again. He felt himself falling backwards in time to last year's autumn, when the unusual relationship he had struck up with his partner had only begun to bloom.
Viola was somewhat of an odd case, he wagered, for a number of reasons. She seemed more interested in watching him and communicating (as best as Pokemon could) than she was in battling, though she never disobeyed a direct order to fight. It began to feel unusual for Johannes to demand such things of her, however. Not for any protest on her part, but more so because of his own budding curiosity as to her general disinterest in what drove most Pokemon and their Trainers through the region.
This curiosity is what allowed him to endure the pitfalls and problems of trying to communicate with a creature that inherently failed to grasp many of the unspoken rules of conversation and coexistence. Viola's aptitude for language from her typing and the prodigious intellect her species granted all of its kind meant shockingly little when at last Johannes could actually speak to her. Then, he would have described it as a conversation with something more animal than human – now, he would say a more accurate statement is "alien." Her language was far from crass or fraught with grammatical error – it was simply the most precise language he'd heard in his life.
This is likely why he found her to be more animal than human (he chuckled to himself – Viola wasn't human, but he kept forgetting) – she said precisely what the situation presented. Her answers were literal, and her desires were given words in a cold, exacting manner. It was unnerving, but for how cold her speech (or rather, telepathy) was, her vocalizations and her body language was more in line with typical human emotion. A wave of mild shame washed over Johannes. Xenophilia ran strongly in his blood. A little too strongly, he would wager, as evidenced by the odd sideways glances he had gotten over the past few months as he and Viola wandered through towns, hand in hand. It hardly mattered to him – the life of a Trainer allowed him a great deal of time away from the odd glances he received.
He figured the odd position he found himself in one winter night, however, was more a product of his foolhardiness (though the xenophilia did factor in a bit) than anything else. Understanding precious little of what Viola meant behind her words, he had come to believe that her words were what they presented, and nothing more. He had been under the impression his attempts at getting her to understand human communication had meant relatively little to her and failed to make much impact on her way of seeing him and how they spoke. Of course, he was wrong.
Johannes unrolled his sleeping bag on the floor of the tent and slipped inside. He stared at the roof of the tent before sitting up as the flaps to his tent opened and revealed Viola. The look on her face was nearly unreadable, save a slight flush in her cheeks.
"Viola? You ready to turn in?" he said, reaching for his bag.
"No," came the reply in his head.
He grinned to himself. The musical quality of her "voice" didn't manifest until the last frosts of that winter. Before that, it had been as cold as the air outside the tent that night.
The flush in her cheeks deepened, and her eyes fell away from his for a moment. She looked back to him, the flush in her cheeks fading somewhat, what he could only imagine was confidence brimming behind her eyes. "This one wishes to procreate."
Johannes's eyes went wide as he sputtered a mish mash of meaningless sounds from his mouth. He had the faintest idea that Viola might have been interested in him, but he was determined to believe that it was the very definition of "faintest." This – this was much more than he bargained for. It took him a moment to register that Viola had been unzipping the sleeping bag and pulling it away from his body. It was then that it dawned on Johannes that it was not a request on her part, it was a statement. Not quite a demand, but she was going to try it.
As many in the animal kingdom simply tried, taking failure as grounds to try again, here or elsewhere, with the same would-be partner, or a new one altogether, he believed she would do exactly the same. Albeit, she would be hard pressed to find another partner, as he kept no other Pokemon and traveled alone. Perhaps a wild one? He shook himself from the contemplation and felt his pajamas pants being pulled away. Johannes was impressed enough to forget to say anything to stop her – he had said precious little to her about human anatomy, but given her general form, it would have been a stretch to believe that their methods of reproduction were much different, and an even bigger stretch to believe she wouldn't have inferred the same. Apart from the eggs anyway.
The last vestiges of his shame came away from him as his underwear did and revealed an unmistakable willingness to "procreate." This willingness was not lost on Viola; the flush in her cheeks rose again and the sounds of her breathing picking up slightly were noticeable. He felt the soft petals of her fingers crawl up his arms and come to a rest on his shoulders as he positioned herself over him. She stopped for a moment to move aside the folds of her dress before lowering herself onto him. The beginnings of protest had been bouncing upon the very tip of tongue, but melted away as Viola's soft folds engulfed him.
Time escaped him, and when at last he withdrew, eagerness wilting in the wake of climax, he looked to Viola who remained laying on her back, the flush fading from her face, and her panting giving way to normal breathing once again. She drew herself up after a minute, pushing hair away from her face and smoothing out her dress before turning to Johannes. In his head, the phrase, "This one is ready to sleep," sprang to life. He nodded, the high that had been keeping him awake now fading and dug her ball out of his bag and aimed it at her. A flash of red light lit the tent for a moment and she was gone.
Johannes pulled himself into his sleeping bag and rubbed his eyes before contemplating the black canvas of the tent. This was nothing like what it had been like with his ex.
He chuckled to himself and stoked the fire in his camp. Typically, couples had a more romantic consummation, and while his was memorable, it was hardly his idea of "flowery." Viola stirred in his lap and sat up, rubbing her eyes blearily. The usual musical tones of her voice were lower and hitching – she was clearly very groggy. "Mas- Um, Johannes," she chimed, "what time is it?" She looked at him, poorly stifling a yawn.
Johannes chuckled and replied after glancing at his watch, "Only 11pm Viola, don't worry. I wouldn't try to wake up too much either, I'm thinking of turning in shortly myself."
She nodded and rose, somewhat unsteady, and reached out for his hand. "Let's go to bed then," she chimed. "Please?" He laughed again and allowed himself to be pulled back to their tent. She threw herself almost immediately onto the (now much larger) sleeping bag upon the ground and yawned again. After changing, Johannes laid down beside her and rested his chin upon her shoulder.
"Viola, you asleep?" he murmured. A soft grunt of denial came from somewhere in her throat. "I was just thinking about last winter. We haven't talked about it much, but I figured you were feeling much better about it. At least, I think so. I don't get many images of it from you when we make love."
It appeared as if an electric charge was running along Viola's neck and spine. She rolled over to face Johannes and looked him in the eyes, a small frown upon her face. "This one..." She stopped. The chimes in his head resumed, sounding thoroughly melancholy, "I am still saddened by it. But not so much that it preoccupies me. It is a thought I do my best to not dwell on. I think that has helped. It doesn't hurt quite so much to have to acknowledge it, and I am happy that we are together." The frown gave way to a small smile. "In more ways than one, if I may add."
He pulled Viola closer to him and kissed her forehead, badly muffling his chuckles. "You've actually gotten a good grasp of innuendo. I'm impressed."
Her laughter was unusual. Like the chimes in his head had moved into his ears, a sort of tinkling sound that lifted his spirits and always split his face into a grin. He felt her press her body closer to his, her laughter dying out and shortly after replaced by the soft breathing of slumber.
He felt himself falling into a reverie once again as he thought back to the time that immediately followed that chilly winter night.
An entire week had passed following that strange, wonderful event he had with her, and it seemed to Johannes that he might as well have just been a seed dispensary. Viola was hardly being cold to him (at least, any colder than her speech made her sound) but she seemed thoroughly uninterested in discussing or even acknowledging what they had done.
Animal lust, he figured, and by the Wednesday of the following week, he was almost certain that it was that and a drive to reproduce that had catalyzed that sex. It was on that day that Viola threw open the flap to his tent looking mildly perturbed. "This one wishes to procreate again. The last time was not fruitful." She ran a finger along her abdomen, where Johannes imagined her womb would be, before crawling up to him and nearly replicating her actions from the last time.
And again the following Wednesday, saying precisely the same thing yet again. And the Wednesday that followed that one. So on and so forth for six Wednesdays. But each time Viola seemed noticeably more perturbed. It was on the seventh that Johannes came to realize that what he had been teaching her about human sexuality, about love (though to say he was teaching was a stretch in this department, as he was doing something akin to stumbling in a half-darkened room himself) and about relationships had been taking to the way she presented herself to him and how she spoke. She was sitting closer to him, held his hand from time to time and had kissed him a few times, though he had initiated all of it without fail (or at the very least requested it.)
But what was looking at him on all fours in his tent this time was not the usual cool, somewhat perturbed face, but instead was a flushed face marked with distress and, most unusually: tears. Viola crawled up to Johannes and cupped his face with her hands.
"This one does not understand. Procreation is not so difficult, so unlikely, that it fails seven consecutive times. This one must try again." Her tone was dissonant – the lightly musical tones that had begun to form around her voice within his head were ringing now in different pitches and registers. It felt as if her voice was bumping about the inside of his skull, growing louder and fainter randomly. "This one must, this one must. Eggs are not so difficult to yield." The clothes on Johannes began to vanish, appearing again in a pile beside him, but the sight of his unwilling loins seemed to tip something within her over.
He felt terrible, and lost, unable to find words that could help the situation, as his clothes vanished from him and the look in her eyes at his unwillingness seemed to fall away somewhere deep inside her. Then the images flooded his mind. A pastiche of all of their encounters, melting into one another, fragmenting into others, alongside explosions of memories from his past relationship, from lonely nights in his room as a teen, to the figures that caught his eye in the past, all of these memories ping-ponged about in his head as unusual, crawling currents of some otherworldly force ran through his body and limbs. Confused arousal welled up in him, and he became only vaguely aware of Viola desperately riding him after a time before the cacophony of moans, catching breaths and cries of ecstasy in his mind gave way to a noise he'd never heard before.
It seemed that Viola was incapable of assaulting his head with the memories she felt would make him more receptive to procreation any longer as her frantic bouncing slowed and then stopped before giving way to quiet weeping.
Johannes roused himself from his stupor as he drew himself towards this unknown sound and sat himself up, prompting Viola to fall unceremoniously off of him and flat on her back. In his head, the swirl of images and sounds began to die away and her slumped figure came into proper focus before him. He shook his head rigorously, trying to get the sight of the inside of his tent to make sense once more and at last noticed that Viola's form was wracked with sobs. Terrified and confused, Johannes reached out and brushed wayward locks from her face. "Viola?" he whispered, "Are you alright?"
He rolled onto his back and sighed. As different as he was from her, it seemed that Viola hadn't drawn the distinction that biology created between their species. Explaining that distinction didn't do her any favors either – she was the closest thing Johannes had seen to inconsolable; inwardly anyway, as this terrible revelation seemed to weigh on her mind more than her body, and it was only in the blurred time that lay between sleeping and waking that half-formed images of the past weeks came into his head. They were beginning to cause him considerable distress however, as he slept less restfully with each passing night and woke decidedly more tired and melancholic each passing day.
He pored over the precious little information his Pokedex afforded him on the Ralts line and figured that there was no real means to escape what was happening – Viola was grieving the loss of what was effectively an evolutionary mandate that was ingrained in most life and this caused her to continually radiate latent energy that was interfering with his sleep.
This, however, brought Johannes a strange feeling of hope. Evidently, what he'd been teaching her had stuck, at least to a certain extent. She was interested, not in finding a means to fulfill this programming, or someone else to fulfill it with (something he was privately thankful for), but instead a means to cope with it.
That hope was confirmed two tiring, painfully quiet weeks later. The day had been dedicated largely to the capstone of his explanation of the concept of personal want and the line it draws between itself and personal requirements. He felt almost guilty, as the aspects he had chosen to teach her during the last two weeks were geared at trying to get across the idea that being intimate did not have to yield fruit, and that personal desires were very different from natural requirements. But this guilt was not all-consuming, as it was a muddy field to walk with her – so much of what he explained was self-serving, self-determined or outright plunges into the black waters of speculation where he was guided by the dim light of his own experiences alone, and though Johannes had lived roughly a quarter of a century, that paled in comparison to the age of something like "love."
As the day came to a close and the sky darkened, Viola sat beside Johannes as he grilled a fish he'd caught for dinner and looked at him. The voice in his head bore warmth he hadn't heard before, and with it, paradoxically, her words managed to convey the unmistakable twangs of hurt and the determined chimes of hope. Like a rose from concrete. "It is difficult to properly accept futility, but this one believes it is in Master's best interests, as well as her own, to try to do so anyway."
Johannes cocked his head. "What?" he said, "What do you mean? You're going to give up?"
She nodded. "Yes. This one has somewhat come to properly grasp doomed attempts at procreation." Viola looked away, color rising in her cheeks. Showing embarrassment was not something Johannes knew her to do, but this certainly seemed to be exactly that. Inwardly, he patted himself on the back. He'd actually taught her something properly. Still, his heart dropped. It seemed that Viola intended to simply give up the pursuits the two of them had shared.
The chimes in his head pulled him back to reality. "But that does not mean that this one has any interest in stopping, futile though it may be." She rose to her feet and lifted her dress, pulling it to either side, the flush on her face a bright scarlet now. "She would like to try again, if Master pleases. I accept that it will be fruitless."
Johannes chuckled, relief washing over him, and took one of her hands, pulling her down to him into a kiss.
A grin spread across his face. The fish had long since burnt by the time they had finished, and he realized after the fact how difficult explaining their escapade would have been to a passerby. But it was worth it. He closed his eyes. Just as she had said afterward too.
It was worth it.
Free Talk: Lengthy delay, I'm aware, whoever it is that reads this, but I'm one part lazy and one part hyper-critical and that doesn't make for fast work. In fact, I'm sure that what I've just written is fraught with errors, could be revised to sound much better and is full of plot holes. So I'll be hating it and myself for being awful in a few short days, but for now I'll ride out the afterglow of having produced something in peace.
That said, I will willingly claim that "I meant to do that" when it comes to the apparent plot holes. Some of them anyway. Communication is a really, really deep subject that is basically just a giant Jenga tower and if you explain one part without explaining the other you start having to make leaps of faith, leaps of logic or just generally stand by, lost as the prose runs away from you and the tower falls apart in the most unsatisfying way possible. This is how I explain away why Viola's character seems experienced in some aspects but decidedly new to others, both in the present and in the recollections Johannes spent most of this chapter having. I may get around to giving explanation to some of the aspects of human communication she's picked up (like affirming or denying statements using throat sounds) or I might just leave them to your imagination.
I think that's the main shield I raise to some of my plot holes: if I detailed every single aspect of communication I could write a book, and I'd rather write a book about something else. But exploration and application of human communication to something like a xeno (which I'm going to go ahead and say is what I'd classify this particular Gardevoir as) is fun stuff and I enjoy it greatly.
That said, I welcome your critique happily, along with your own input or interpretations, be it a review or a PM. Or a steam message, I don't care, whatever floats your boat. I won't make any promises about updating "soon" as that would make me a filthy liar. I'll update eventually. Maybe. You can take that to the bank.