Beyond The Walls
Chapter 28: Surprise Part 3
Professor Oak smiled warmly at his grandson. "You certainly took your time heading down here, Gary," he said lightly, not noticing the frown on Gary's face. "And, yes, I did want to see you. I want to talk to you about something important, but first, I have something to tell you."
Gary continued to frown, wondering what on earth his grandfather wanted to talk to him about as he followed the older man to a corner of the large lab that contained several desks along the walls. He noticed now that the desks that were once used by the professor's former lab assistants, but had merely collected stacks of paperwork, broken equipment, and dust for the past several years, had been cleaned off since he had last been in the lab. The dated computers that had been on the desks before had been replaced by new ones, far nicer than the old ones.
The shelves above each desk had been filled with books and journals pertaining to different subjects; the shelves above one desk had been devoted to anatomy and medical texts, above another desk were several biochemical texts, another desk contained books on microbiology as well as reproduction, which Gary found to be rather odd, while yet another desk appeared to be devoted to general biology and pokemon behavior. They stopped at the last desk and Professor Oak gestured for Gary to sit.
"What do you want to talk to me about?" Gary asked warily as he slowly sat down in the chair at the desk, his eyes flicking up to glance over the contents of the shelf.
He was surprised to see the shelf filled with texts on genetics and journals on genetic engineering and cloning – his grandfather had never been particularly interested in that field and Gary was well aware of this fact. His eyes fell to the surface of the desk where a journal lay open to a report that he recognized. He recognized it immediately, not surprising, considering he had written part of it. He was slightly disappointed to notice his name last in the list of researchers, yet he understood why that was; after all, in science, seniority overruled genius. He knew he had been a mere intern who happened to come up with an idea after reading Jurassic Park too many times. It was miraculous that the idea had worked in the first place.
Professor Oak noticed Gary glance at the report and smiled. "You made me very proud when I read that, Gary," he said softly, leaning against the desk to the right of the one Gary was sitting at.
"Thank you," Gary muttered, lowering his eyes to the floor as a slight flush spread across his cheeks.
The professor laughed softly. "So you can be modest around me but not around anyone else?" he asked lightly, surprised by the fact that Gary had no smart comment to make about it.
Gary glanced up at his grandfather, a slight smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Are you trying to say that I'm egotistical?" he asked, knowing the answer.
"You? Egotistical? Oh no, of course not, Gary!" Professor Oak replied sarcastically, smiling as Gary laughed.
"I'm not as bad as I used to be," Gary pointed out, picking at the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
"I don't think it's possible for anyone to be as egotistical as you used to be, Gary!" Ash's voice came from a few lab benches away, where the boy was still hanging out with Tracey.
"Watch it, Ashy-boy; who's the better trainer here?" Gary shot back with a smirk.
"The one who made it further in competitions," Professor Oak said at the same time as Ash replied.
"The one who's still a trainer."
Gary ignored Ash's reply and turned back to his grandfather with an indignant squawk. "Hey! Who's side are you on?"
Professor Oak laughed at his grandson's reaction. "I'm not picking sides for this particular battle," he said simply, smiling as Gary's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Grandpa! You're supposed to side with me: I'm your own flesh and blood! Alex, shut up!" he called across the room as Alex began laughing at the exchange while Gary forced down his own laughter.
"Ah, some things never change," the professor said with a smile.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Gary exclaimed, momentarily forgetting the reason he was even in the lab.
"Never mind that, Gary, we're getting off topic."
"Then get back on topic: what am I doing here?"
"Patience is a virtue, Gary."
"Oh yeah, now who's off topic?"
Professor Oak laughed again. "Never mind. Do me a favor and open that drawer to your right."
Gary opened the drawer in question and pulled out the only two contents with a frown. "Jurassic Park and Powerslave?" He asked in confusion, staring down at the book and cd in hand.
"I figured that, since these are two of your favorite things, they would wind up down here sometime over the next few months, so I thought I would put them someplace where you could easily find them," Professor Oak explained with a cryptic smile.
"What are you talking about?" Gary asked slowly, his frown deepening as he glanced up to meet his grandfather's eyes.
"You know that research project that we've been –"
"You mean the research project that you've been working on non-stop with Tracey and May while completely leaving me out of the loop? The one that you keep kicking me out of the lab – "
"Hey, Gary! You're on the research team, stop whining!"
"I wasn't whin –" Gary paused, his grandfather's words slowly sinking in. "Wait, what?"
"You heard me, Gary."
Gary shook his head, convinced that he must have misheard his grandfather somehow. "I think I'm still drunk. Andrew, how much did you let me drink last night?" he asked incredulously, raising his voice for his friend to hear him across the lab.
Professor Oak shook his head with a grin. "Gary, you heard me correctly. You're on the research team. We didn't want to tell you about the project because we wanted to surprise you."
Gary froze, staring at his grandfather for a long moment before the shock finally hit him. "Oh my god," he said softly, covering his face with his hands. "I think I might pass out," he added with a slight laugh.
"Oh, like that time in anatomy lab when we had to take out the clefairy's eyeball and dissect it?" Andrew asked from across the room. He frowned at the lack of response from Gary while Chelsea and Shawn turned from the molecule on the board to stare at him.
"Andrew, you're the one that passed out in that lab," Shawn reminded him.
"Yeah, Gary didn't even throw up that time," Chelsea spoke up. "I thought for sure that he was going to go down, though – remember how pale he went, Shawn?" she laughed.
"Are you serious?" Gary finally asked, ignoring the comments of his friends.
"Would I joke about this, Gary?"
"I would hope not…" Gary muttered under his breath. "Wait, you never even told me what the project is."
"I was wondering when you would bring that up," Professor Oak said. "Do you remember when Tracey and I visited the university at the end of the last fall semester?"
Gary nodded. He remembered that semester vividly, it had been his first semester living with his roommates and it was full of partying, bickering, compromising, and experimenting. His grandfather had visited in the beginning of November, when there were only three weeks before the last day of classes followed by a week of exams, to give a guest lecture on his findings from a then-recently completed and published study. Tracey and the professor had spent a week in Sinnoh and Gary had barely seen them, too busy studying with Chelsea, Andrew, and Shawn for an upcoming anatomy exam – anatomy was not Gary's strong point – as well as working on a huge ecology data report.
"Well, when we were there, Damien told Alex and I something quite interesting about a litter between an umbreon and an espeon that he had heard about."
Gary frowned; his grandfather couldn't possibly be referring to the strange litter that two of Ashley's breeding pokemon had in October of the year he was talking about.
"What he told us raised a lot of questions about pokemon reproduction, particularly amongst eevees and their various evolutionary forms. I'm not sure whether or not you know this, but there haven't been any scientific studies or experimentations done on that particular subject since the early sixties, which were highly unethical, I should add – they were a huge sensation when I was in school for my bachelor's degree.
"I'm sorry, I'm getting off topic. Alex and I spent quite some time discussing what Damien told us and, after a few weeks of discussion, we decided to begin a study together. Of course, we knew we couldn't do much more than read what others had done. After all, I only have Tracey and occasionally May as my lab assistants and Alex only had Chris at the time. Neither of us were in the proper field for a project of the sort we were interested in – myself being in ecology and Alex primarily in biochemistry with only a small amount of experience in genetics. We knew we had to come up with an idea for a proper research team – and find people who not only would be capable of it, but be interested in the project – as well as brainstorm the actual experimentation. After a few months of brainstorming, we came up with our own ideas, combined them, and tweaked them until we had an idea that would work."
He paused, noticing that Gary still looked shell-shocked from the revelation a few minutes prior. "Still following me?"
Gary nodded. "Yeah," he said distractedly, wishing his grandfather would just come out and tell him specifically what the project was.
"Good. Well, then we started looking into specimens, equipment, research partners – anything and everything required for a major scientific undertaking – and, aside from the equipment, we came up fairly empty-handed. Then, thanks to Dr. Smith, uh, Monica, to you, I suppose?" Gary nodded and the professor continued once more. "Thanks to Monica, we realized that everything we needed was pretty much right under our noses! Especially for Alex: teaching at the university brings him into contact with a diverse group of young researchers and, between himself and Monica, they can see who has the capabilities to perform in a study so large and complicated."
"Um, Grandpa?" Professor Oak raised his eyebrows in inquiry as to Gary's interruption. "Could I get the Cliff's Notes version?"
The professor stared at him blankly for a few seconds while Tracey laughed at Gary's blunt question. "Oh, sure, of course. I guess you want to have time to hang out with your friends sometime today?"
"Well, yeah, but the suspense is kind of killing me here," Gary replied dryly with a slight roll of the eyes.
"Ok, I'll cut to the chase. You know how pokemon only give birth to their evolutionary base, right?" Gary gave him a look that clearly said 'I'm not an idiot'. "Ok, that was a stupid question, of course you know that. There have always been rumors about pokemon giving birth to litters that have already evolved in the womb but no one has ever done a study on it so that's what we're going to do. With eevee evolutions to be precise."
Gary leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he thought over what the professor had just said. "Eevee research… you would need someone for the genetics portion considering eevee's genetic code. The code would only get more screwy working with the reproduction of the evolutions…" Gary mused. He paused as something else occurred to him. "The rest of the team came from the university?" Professor Oak nodded, curious to see if Gary would be able to guess who was on the team without any hints other than what he had already been told. "People I would know?"
"Perhaps," was the cryptic reply.
Gary groaned, he didn't feel like playing guessing games just to find out who else his grandfather intended on having on this research team; especially considering the fact that he strongly disliked many of his former classmates and this was an enormous and potentially groundbreaking study. He knew his grandfather was being cryptic for a reason: he was most likely testing Gary to see if he could figure out the team on his own.
"I'll take that as a yes," he said flatly, standing to take a closer look at the books above the other shelves. "I assume Tracey and May are part of the team as well?" he asked his grandfather as he stood in front of the desk next to his.
"Of course."
"I know you'll only take on people with reputable experience, so if you're using people from the school, they'll most likely have either worked with a prominent professor or doctor for their internship and they'll have probably worked as a lab assistant at the school," Gary mused.
He glanced over the biology books and took down a text on pokemon behavior that looked remarkably like a book Andrew had used in one of his courses a few semesters back. "With that in mind; there were only three general biology majors that also had a minor in behavior or psychology and I only knew one of them. That person not only worked with Professor Birch but he also worked as a lab assistant."
Gary ran his fingers along the edge of the pages before opening the book to a random page which bore the marks of purple and blue highlighter – Andrew always had color-coded his highlighting in text books. He closed the book again and opened the front cover to reveal the name written in blue ink. "Andrew, of course, like I thought. He's good with pokemon too, I'm sure Alex brought that up before you decided on him."
Professor Oak smiled. "Are you positive?" Gary nodded, his knowing smirk faltering when his grandfather quirked an eyebrow. "How do you know it's not someone else and Andrew just loaned his book to us?"
Gary frowned and pulled open the top drawer on the right of the desk, the same one that had held his book and Iron Maiden cd on the other desk. There was only one thing in it and he almost missed it sitting in the back corner. A small, thick red guitar pick – the same type his friends used exclusively.
"Like I said, Andrew," Gary replied with a smile, placing the book and pick on the desk and closing the drawer as he walked to the next desk and peered at the books. "Microbiology and reproduction. There were a lot of microbiology majors and a bunch of them worked with Dr. Carroll as assistants in his research on egg and sperm cell interaction but only one interned with him." Gary opened the drawer and removed a worn piece of paper. "Nightwish, November fifteenth. The concert Shawn went to and the ticket that Shawn uses as a bookmark. Need I say more?"
"Two down, not bad, Gary," Professor Oak said with a proud smile as he watched his grandson close the drawer to the desk and place the ticket on the desk.
"That one was pretty obvious though, Grandpa. The only way it could've been more obvious was to put a piece of paper on the desk saying 'virgin and possibly gay'."
"I heard that!" Shawn called, scowling as Gary laughed softly.
"I was kidding – I know you like girls… though the fact that you read Laurell K. Hamilton novels makes me question that," Gary muttered, glancing at the biochemistry books on the shelf above the next desk. "I'm going to guess Chris since he's worked with Alex as a lab assistant for the past three years and since he only has one semester left before he gets his masters. But, to humor you…" He pulled open the drawer and took out a worn book. "Hannibal…" Gary muttered, shaking his head as he flipped through the pages to reveal notes in the margins.
"Definitely Chris," he said with a small smirk, tossing the book on the desk. Chris had a fascination with abnormal psychology as well as serial killers, the Hannibal series of books was his favorite and he analyzed the books deeply. It was one reason he got along so well with Damien, Jon, and Andrew, who all had a vast interest in psychology in some form or another. Gary had never cared for it much, it made him uncomfortable to think of what others might see in him.
"I'd say that was the easy one, even without the book," Professor Oak pointed out, Gary ignored the comment.
"One person left and I'm guessing it's Chelsea – there were only six pre-med majors in my freshman class and she did her internship with Professor Ivy. Just in case though…" In the drawer was a metal keychain of a scuba diving flag. Chelsea loved to dive whenever she got a chance, it probably had something to do with growing up in the subtropical archipelago.
Gary looked up at his grandfather with a small smirk on his face. "Did I pass your test?"
"With flying colors, as usual," Professor Oak replied.
Gary leaned against the desk and laughed in disbelief, still surprised. "All this time I was so pissed at you because I thought you didn't want me involved in this because of school… and in the end, you were planning on me being involved the whole time!" He paused, shaking his head. "I can't believe it. You seriously want me on your research team?"
"I thought I'd made that part obvious, Gary," Professor Oak said with a smile and a soft laugh. "The question is, do you want to be on it?"
"Of course! You realize eevee's been one of my favorite pokemon, right? Ever since Ashley told me about that litter her umbreon and espeon had, I've wanted to be able to research that; and on top of that, you want me to work with, not only you and Alex, but with four of my friends from school and Tracey and May? Grandpa, why the hell would I turn down something like that?"
The professor laughed at the excited response. "I'm glad you feel that way. We're not starting until January, at the beginning of the spring semester. Since Alex is part of this project, it can serve as Chris' independent study while he finishes his other classes online – part of the reason we're waiting. I believe Andrew and Shawn are also going to be doing online classes for the masters degrees as well." Gary nodded, slightly worried that he was going to try pressuring him into starting on his degree as well. "You know I'd like to see you do the same, but you don't have to. I personally think you should wait awhile longer before going back to school, especially since you've been on a semester-long vacation from anything involving work and now you'll be starting research once more."
"Do you actually think that?" Gary asked suspiciously, his grandfather had pressured him often about school in August and September. He had been the one to very strongly encourage – just short of force – Gary to take advantage of the university allowing him to begin classes at fifteen.
"Yes, Gary, I do. Most people your age are graduating high school or just beginning college, you've already done much more than that. I don't see why you should have to rush into the next part when I've already rushed you through everything else."
Gary let out a shaky breath that he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Finally, his grandfather understood and, finally, he was letting him make his own decision – granted he had essentially always done that, stepping in to offer a guiding hand that Gary was always quick to follow, but now he was allowing Gary to guide himself. That realization meant more to him than his inclusion in the project he had resented over the past few months.
"Thank you," he whispered, stepping away from the desk to hug his grandfather. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
The professor smiled as he embraced his grandson. "You're welcome, Gary. I know how much being involved in this project means to you."
"It's not just that," Gary said softly as his grandfather's grip on him tightened slightly.
"I know."
… … …
The lab door swung closed loudly behind Gary as he stepped into the hallway leading back to the house, startling the young woman standing a few feet away.
"Anna! Guess what!"
Anna already knew the reasoning behind the wide grin on Gary's face as he pulled her into his arms once he reached her. "What?" she asked with a smile.
Gary knew Anna was probably already aware of the news but he told her anyways, his words jumbling slightly in his rush to tell her. Anna smiled up at him, thrilled to see Gary far happier than he had been as long as she could remember. She knew he had longed to be part of this project of Professor Oak's but even she was surprised by Gary's joy as he continued talking happily about it.
After a few moments, Anna reached out and placed a finger against Gary's lips, surprised when she saw a tear trace its path down Gary's pale cheek.
"Sweetie, you're crying?" she said in confusion, frowning as she reached up to wipe away the lone tear.
"I know, it's pitiful, isn't it?" Gary asked with a laugh, wiping his eyes.
Anna shook her head. "It's not pitiful at all, this is something huge for you. I know it means a lot to you." She leaned forward to plant a sweet kiss against his lips, which he returned with a fervor that caught her slightly off-guard.
Anna groaned softly against Gary's lips as his hands slid down her sides to toy with the waist of her jeans. One hand slid around her waist and pulled her, if possible, closer against his chest. Anna pulled away from the kiss suddenly.
"Upstairs," she whispered, turning and dragging Gary along with her as she ran down the hall with a laugh.
Once upstairs and in the privacy of Gary's room, the kisses turned passionate as they rolled on the bed, nearly battling for dominance as their clothes were tossed on the ground around the bed. Anna gazed up at Gary when they were finished, hands sliding along his bare back before coming to at rest behind his head, resting gently on the back of his neck while he maintained his position over her, arms trembling slightly as they supported his weight. Gary lowered his head slightly, enough to brush his nose against hers with a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"First time since what you said on the beach," he said softly against her lips before kissing her gently.
Anna said nothing, simply returning his steady gaze, moving her hands to lightly cup his face, fingers delicately tracing over his cheekbones before gently sweeping aside the strands of auburn hair that fell around their faces. Gary smiled at her gesture, closing his eyes serenely and turning his head to trail kisses along the hand that remained against his face. Anna dropped her hand from his face, returning them to the back of his neck to tangle lightly in his mussed hair as Gary slowly slid off of her to lie next to her, pulling her close to him and trailing soft kisses along her cheek and jaw.
The kisses stopped after a moment and Anna felt Gary's lips move against her cheek in silent words. Anna pulled away slightly and met his eyes, suddenly understanding the three mouthed words. Longing to say the words that were on her tongue but remembering the conversation they'd had on the same bed the night before, Anna merely smiled understandingly, promising herself that she wouldn't speak the words again until he finally said them to her.
… … …
