Leon is the first to point out to his face the problem Hop hadn't realized was a problem, but he's definitely not the first to think it or scrawl it out. Hop has seen the things written about him and Gloria, even if some of those things have made him wish he was illiterate.
"You know," Leon says over a spoonful of cereal, "I've been reading the papers and watching your matches, and it seems like you and Gloria get on really well. Almost a little too well." He offers a small and preemptively comforting smile like the implication is obvious on the last few words and Hop can only stare blankly.
It is one of those glorious mornings that Hop and Leon have time to spend together, and spend time together they do. Postwick finally feels more like it used to with two thirds of its foundation here, but it still isn't quite home. Not without its prodigal daughter.
"Is that a bad thing?" Hop asks, tipping the bowl in his hands to his lips to noisily drink the milk from it.
Leon is older and wiser and knows many things. He has experience with love, if his many years spent hopelessly waltzing around his affections for a certain Gym Leader and rival are any indication. They are truly brothers in that respect. Hop trusts that he has some wisdom to impart, and his ears are at the ready when Leon speaks again.
"Not necessarily. It's just that the honeymoon phase isn't meant to last for more than the first few months. After that, things can get...tense."
Hop's brows crease as he sets the bowl down. "Are you speaking from experience, Lee?"
Leon laughs, a hearty and robust noise for a hearty and robust Trainer. "Well, sure! Most everybody I know has gone through a rough patch at one point, at least. I'm no different. It's normal to have relationship troubles from time to time." He leans towards Hop, voice wisping into a tone that is conspiratorial in the most concerned and fraternal way. "Have you two been having any difficulties lately? Any arguments?"
Hop's brain rattles off a few recent memories: the time Gloria had made a fuss over him coming to see her when he was ill and by all means should have stayed in bed, but he'd promised, and their disagreements over which Meowth form is superior. (Gloria, ever patriotic, being firmly in the camp of Galarian Meowth and her beloved Perrserker, while Hop argued for the appreciation of the native Kantonian specimen).
"None that I can think of! Nothing major, that is. Is that normal, too?"
Leon looks a bit flummoxed, although the smile doesn't spiral from his face, just settles into a thin line. "I'm sure it is. Just let your big brother know if anything comes up, okay? I've got plenty of know-how when it comes to these things."
Hop doesn't think he'll need the advice, but he believes without a hint of doubt or self-awareness that Leon is his best bet for it, so he nods and says sure.
Leon says something about Raihan, and Hop fires back with something about Gloria, and they laugh till milk spills from Hop's nose when they realize they've got yet another kind of rivalry brewing between them.
They're sickening in their sweetness. So say a number of sources. Hop can't exactly refute it. The evidence is stacked against him: the times he's been unable to answer a question properly on account of Gloria peppering kisses all over his face, or the time they'd been blown up on the big screen kiss cam during an intermission, hunkering down behind the stands to touch their foreheads and noses together like they'd never see each other again. Hop still hasn't lived that one down.
It must indeed be kind of revolting how much they love each other, from an outsider's perspective. Sonia has a thing or two to say about public displays of affection, but as with most things her enforcement of them is lax. She is anything but punitive, and she looks more like she wants to plan their wedding than scold them when Hop holds his girlfriend's hand through an interview, gazes at her till he forgets the question that's been asked.
Small wonder then that the Servine (Gloria's words, not his) on the media teams are bent on scraping together a scandal at every turn. They don't have much to work with, so they turn to wondering if the whole thing isn't a facade, that the Champion or perhaps her boyfriend may be hiding something beneath the saccharine surface. They're almost adamant enough to make Hop wonder whether they really might be doing it all wrong. Almost.
"Oh, get a load of this, Gloria," Hop says, laughter turning his words staccato. Gloria leans over his phone to read for herself. "It says here you're thinking of retiring! And we're right on the brink of breaking up because you're not planning on passing your title down to me."
Last week the nastiest rumor on one of the slimier and more obscure accounts had been that Gloria was seeing someone on the side. That hadn't sat well with her, and she'd only barely avoided assault charges when one journalist had steered their conversation to the topic. Hop has the duty and the habit of keeping her grounded just as she does for him, and he hadn't failed her that time.
Gloria crinkles her nose. "I'd sooner die," she says, and whether she's referring to the act of retiring or giving her Championship to someone other than Hop, he isn't sure, but his laughter intensifies, and it warbles in tune with hers.
He scrolls down a little further, and there's someone saying it's odd that the two of them never fight. That makes two people now who've said it outright. Below, another someone comments that they've got to be hiding something, and whatever it is is destined to make their relationship implode. Strong words. Hop stops laughing and stops scrolling.
Gloria is on her own phone now, and the rhythmic tapping of her thumbs on the screen tells him she's not on social media but playing some game. She glances up when she notices the lull in Hop's voice. "I'm not retiring, just so we're clear," she says, "and I'm not planning on breaking up with you."
Hop chokes a little. Her bluntness is as familiar to him as it is startling, the way it comes in a rush at times like this and knocks him over by the feet like riptide. "I know! I'm not worried about any of the things these sorry excuses for news outlets ever say. Just…"
"Just…?"
"Do you think it's weird? How we never argue?"
The tapping stops, and Gloria looks at him from the glow of her phone. Her mouth isn't frowning but her eyes are. "What's this all about?"
"Lee was saying the other day that couples argue sometimes, and he said that it's normal and fine. He asked if there was anything like that going on between us, and I said no." Gloria is not as keen on Leon's words as Hop is, but she admires him, has since she was a small child, and they must hold some weight to her. "I've been thinking that maybe it is a little strange how we never. Fight, I mean."
"Him and Raihan get into another one of their spats?" Gloria doesn't miss a beat asking, and her bottom lip snakes dangerously into the first inklings of a smile.
"Haha… I don't know about that. Maybe! They are rivals, after all, and they've been competing with each other for a long time."
Leon's old throne has not been his anymore for some good time, but his and Raihan's rivalry goes as strong as their love. Every once in a while it ruptures into a heated and spontaneous match on some trail or at the gates of Hammerlocke, and a few lucky bystanders get to bathe in the fallout.
(Much to Hop's blabbermouth pride, Leon almost always comes out victorious. They are quite unlike brothers in this regard.)
"Hop," says Gloria, in as gentle a pitch as she can manage, "we're rivals, too. And I'm not caught up in what anyone thinks of our relationship. I don't think we're meant to act this way or that or there's got to be something amiss. Unless you want for us to argue...?"
Her dark eyes brim with mirth and a weighty challenge, and as much as Hop loves a challenge, he shakes his head no, backs away from this one. There's no bite to her words, no burn to the way she bats her lashes, but Hop only feels the fire course through him when they battle. This is not a battle.
"...But if you had to give up your title to someone, you'd choose me, right?" he asks.
Gloria sits up, strokes a thumb over his cheekbone where she holds his face in her hand to kiss him. "In a heartbeat."
"It's all about connection!" Leon's smile is wide as he booms over the TV screen, chest heaving with laughter and pride. "When two people who share a strong bond battle, their hearts are as connected with each other as they are with their own Pokémon!"
It's sort of a poetic thing to say, Hop thinks, and Raihan seems to think so too, judging by the way his eyes go the slightest bit watery as he watches Leon yammer on to the interviewer. When the woman asks them if it isn't hard, being rivals in much the same way as they are boyfriends, Raihan takes that as his cue.
"Our relationship isn't any worse for the occasional argument," he says, "or for our battles. In fact, I'd say our rivalry only deepens the care and respect we've got for each other. We push each other, help each other grow."
Hop can see the merit in that.
"Disagreement and conflict aren't always bad things, either," Leon chimes in. "Sometimes it really is necessary to let your true feelings go and blow off steam. The important thing is to do it in a healthy way, no matter who it is you're disagreeing with!"
It is, as always, a sage piece of advice from his brother. Hop nods like Leon's just passed it down to him face-to-face, like his brother is here with him.
He takes it to heart, because the way Leon and Raihan look at each other, squeeze each other's hands like they're the only two people in the world, tells him to.
Hop's mind is beginning to itch like it needs a good scratching, but he can't quite reach in far enough to do it.
That's where Gloria comes in, as she does.
They're laying on her bed, sprawled out like languid Liepard, her back twisting in a way that can't possibly be good for the human spine and makes Hop cringe a little. Her feet hang off the side and her head is on his chest; his arm is starting to go numb but he can't bring himself to move or say anything because she looks comfortable like that, half-lidded eyes fixed on the ceiling.
"I've been thinking," Hop says, and Gloria glances to her side to look at him knowing that can mean any number of things, "about what Lee said the other day."
"Oh, yeah?" She sounds like she's bracing herself, but she holds fast to him, listening.
"Yeah. And I know you don't place too much weight on what other people think of our relationship—I don't either! I know we shouldn't. But I was thinking, after what Lee said, it can be good to let things out sometimes. You know...lay all our feelings out on the table."
Catharsis, that's what he means even if he isn't sure Gloria knows the word. She certainly is familiar with the feeling, the rising push and the crushing fall of release. It comes to her in every battle; he can see it in the red that colors her face whenever her victory is hanging by a thread and one of her many Pokémon at last delivers the finishing blow.
Maybe this is a kind of battle, too. Maybe it can be, by the grace of her hot blood and stubbornness and his own impulsiveness and the heart on his sleeve.
She turns to him, and there's as much wickedness in her eyes as there is love. "Okay, then," she says, "let's talk it out." She rises from her place on his chest and sits up straight, motioning for him to do the same, and then she leans down, leaving twin imprints in the mattress with her knees, and presses her hands down on his shoulders to anchor herself. "I'm rather tired of the way you look at me from across the pitch like you're trying to throw each match with how handsome you are."
Hop's heart hammers in dull thumps against its caging. He knows what this is, can't mistake it for anything else when the words leave her lips and she's looking at him with a rage of playfulness in all her features.
It's an amusing reversal, how she is taller than him now, looming slightly, but it only bolsters his courage.
He meets her right on.
"I don't like the tone of your voice when you call my name all the way from the other side of the crowds. It sounds like a song and it makes my heart race."
"I'm not fond of how mushy you get with all the pet names you give me. Sweetheart, really? You're dedicated to turning me into a sap, aren't you?"
They're laughing, Hop realizes, and it's a resonant sound like the clinking of bells. They are well and truly alone, he thinks, a sudden sliver of revelation—not just in this space but in the world. No one else has so intimate an understanding of every nerve and vessel that makes either one of them tick.
She lifts a hand to brush fingers across where his cheek flattens, and he touches at the back of her hand with his own. She is staring now, meeting the lock of his eyes on hers, a confusion of deep brown beckoning for his full attention.
No one else has the words.
"I hate the way you talk yourself down, Hop. It hurts to listen to."
He breathes in, not a sharp noise but a quiet one, eyes twitching shut for a moment. "I know. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize."
Her fingers slide to the jut of his jaw, and his hand moves with them, feeling the gentle flex of her knuckles. He pleads for her wordlessly not to pull away, and she heeds his call like their minds are linked where their hands meet.
He doesn't hate the way she corners him like this, only wishes he did. They've been through it before, this thing like a ritual or a crude mockery of one, and it strengthens his resolve a bit more each time, but there is still a piece that makes him ache like he's yearning for something and does not know what.
Their hands stay there, on the side of his face like they're holding tight against a wound, staunching a critical flow. She lets her head drop to brush her fringe against his and he wraps his free arm over her back and holds her like a lifeline when she pulls away enough to look at him again.
He's been pushing back the weakness that threatens to breach, and he only realizes too late it's not the thing he should have been staving off all this time.
In most cases she'd crush the pesky knot, the blight of his many fears, under the heel of her boot, turn it to a fine silt and go on her way with him at her side. Perhaps she is coming to a realization of her own, though, because she decides today is a day to sit with it, let it roll through.
"You make me stronger," he says. He should shut his eyes, should turn his gaze from hers, but maybe he is too bold for his own good because he goes on looking into the daunting pyre of her stare. "I mean that."
"I know you do." He means most things. "And you keep me balanced. I'd be a lost cause if it weren't for you."
"Oh, now who's the one talking themselves down?"
"Let's call it even, then." There's laughter on the tug of her lips but her lungs won't loose it. She leans into him, or he leans into her, the uncertainty a testament to how in sync they really are.
Gloria's hand lifts from the pressure point trembling at the hollow of his cheek, and it is like a stopper being pulled when she moves to thread her fingers through his hair instead. He moves to set his face into the crook of her neck. She smells faintly like something singed or overcooked. She is not a raging wildfire in this semblance of a home she's built with him but a steady heat over a pit of scrap wood and black coals.
"I love that you stay here with me, even when things get tough," he says, pulling back again, soft like he's been meaning to say it but could never figure out how. "I love everything you do for me, Gloria."
She knows it, and he knows that she knows, but what good would it do to keep it inside? Leon has told him: The more you bottle things up, the more likely they are to burst in the end. He'd been talking about hurt and pain and anger, but Hop sees no reason it shouldn't apply to this, too.
"I love your smile, Hop. Your real smile." He gives her one now. "It makes me feel things I'd never thought I could feel."
"I love the way you give it everything you've got each and every time we battle. You never do go easy on me."
"Never." She grins, canines flashing in the lowlight. She cuts like obsidian, sharp and precise, and Hop would not have it any other way.
He stills under her touch but his heart is moving restlessly, growing outward. He lets his cheek rest on the roughness of her right palm, and he thinks it strange how natural the contrast feels: the raw, weathered look and feel of her and the delicate timbre of her voice. He's never heard it anywhere else, not in any interviews and certainly not in the stadium.
"I only want to fight with you when we're out there," he says, "on the pitch. That's the only time we should be at odds."
She nods, and there's thoughtful consideration in the movement. "I can get behind that," she says, "on one condition."
He tilts his head up, curiously, because she's leaning back and looking over him once more. "What's that?"
"You don't dare hold back, and you keep doing your best to pull my throne out from under me."
His laugh leaves him just as hers departs too, and he holds her at the waist, moves her close against him. It sounds almost like a quarrel, the way they descend into a fit of love-you-mores, but they're betrayed by the giggling that bounces and sticks to the walls of Gloria's flat.