"I think it's cute."
"I think you're crazy," Hugh grumbled back.
There was no way he was going to admit that Galvantula was cute. Not even Nate giving him the puppy eyes, which worked for almost everything else, was going to get him near that... thing.
Hugh had almost been able to tolerate it as a Joltik, but evolving had made it gigantic. He wasn't a fan of spiders to begin with, let alone ones that were nearly as large as he and Nate were, and Hugh wondered not for the first time why Nate had bothered catching that thing in the first place.
"Aw, come on... You're hurting her feelings!"
"You're not convincing me to-"
"I'll give you a kiss," Nate declared suddenly.
"You... Y-you'll what!?" Hugh coughed, attempting to regain his composure after his face had turned bright red and ultimately failing in the end. The cheesy, know-it-all grin Nate was giving him helped none.
But it was obvious now that not only was Nate was attempting to bribe him, in a way that Hugh had never imagined, the boy also had a good idea of why Hugh didn't want to go near his Pokemon. Hugh wasn't sure which realization shocked him more.
"I... H-how do you find out about these things?"
It wasn't exactly something that Hugh would write down – like, 'dear diary, have I ever mentioned I'm afraid of spiders? By the way, I'm also crushing on my best friend, hope that's not a problem.' Hugh had been telling himself what he had was just a stupid crush, and that he would eventually get over it... for about the past three years.
He didn't have an excuse for the thing about spiders though. That was just something that had happened all of a sudden.
Nate's stupid smile widened. It became stupid whenever it started to irritate Hugh, even though he stilled loved it.
"You just implied I was right," Nate replied, and Hugh cursed. "And," the brown-haired boy continued, drawing out the word cheerfully, "Your little sister..."
"She did!?"
"...May or may not have said something about it before we left. In case the opportunity arose. You know."
"My..."
"Along with the whole 'fear of spiders' thing, though she probably didn't suspect I would ever take advantage of it like this."
Hugh's thinking slowed to a crawl, as he tried to process this information. He was embarrassed that his sister would just tell somebody these things, and Hugh felt even worse about it because he was blaming her when he was more at fault than she was. After all, if he hadn't told her in the first place...
Nate waited patiently for about half a minute as Hugh attempted to form the words for his next sentence, petting Galvantula lazily. But in the end, Nate wasn't a very patient person and he didn't have several minutes to wait until Hugh finally ended up resolving the situation by running away. Deciding to come up with his own resolution, Nate spoke up, "Hugh, just pet the damn spider already. I kind of wanted to kiss you too."
I can't actually see Hugh being afraid of spiders. I wrote this because Bug types are my favorites. Basically, I needed an entire drabble dedicated to that fact.
