Ash's rotom-phone started ringing in the middle of the night, startling and waking up both him and Goh.
"Aaaaash," Goh whined. "Who in their right mind would call you at… one in the morning?"
"Well, maybe they aren't in their right mind right now," Ash replied while looking at the caller ID. Ash was a little exasperated. At this point, he didn't know how many times he demanded that Lance slept for once. Of course, Lance would be too scared of Delia to not listen to him. But he somehow found a loophole in Ash's words and only listened for that one night. He was so gonna get it the next time Ash sees him. After this phone call, of course.
"Ash! There you are," Lance answered. "I have your first stack of paperwork for you."
What? He called in the middle of the night for paperwork? On top of that, he sounded extremely tired. So he hasn't been sleeping, Ash mused.
Lance was so gonna get it.
"Why is the middle of the night a good time to tell me this?" Ash grumbled. Adding on to Lance's past mistakes, it wasn't a good idea to wake an Ash Ketchum up in the middle of the night.
"Well, you did say…" Lance paused to make his voice more high pitched and emphasized. "Tell me any time I have something to do! It's my region, after all."
"Shut up!" Ash glared at the phone. "I don't sound like that."
The Kanto Champion gave a tired chuckle. "Fine, fine. Just come over to my office and pick it up in the morning. Alright?"
"'Kay, night Lance."
Needless to say, Lance was going to have a relaxing and fun day tomorrow. He's not gonna overwork himself, not on Ash's watch.
Grinning, Ash flopped back into bed, only to find a very surprised research partner staring at him.
"What do you want?"
"YOU KNOW CHAMPION LANCE? AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME? AND YOU SUPPOSEDLY OWN A REGION?"
Ash smiled sheepishly. "Sorry I didn't tell you, but right now, I just wanna sleep."
The next morning, Ash dragged Goh to Lance's office on Dragonite.
On spotting them in the sky, Lance screamed. "Ash! You never told me you had a Dragonite! You know, last night would've been a great time, because my own Dragonite was about to shoot you out of the sky!"
Ash screamed back. "Sorry!."
The two finally reached the ground, and Ash noticed Lance's dark bags under his eyes.
"Lance?" "Mhm?" Ash continued with a sickly sweet smile on his face. "How long have you been sleeping for?"
Lance looked downright terrified. "I didn't?"
"Lance!" Ash yelled, exasperated. "I told you to sleep more often! Do you want me to send mom over and get her to make you sleep? You know what? I'm banning you from drinking coffee for the next week. Got it?"
"But I have paperwork…"
"I'll do them. I'm not your secondary champion for nothing. Just hand them over and go sleep."
Lance reluctantly agreed, handing over the stack of papers to Ash.
A few grueling hours later, Ash finally finished the paperwork. Honestly, Ash didn't know what to do with the child who tried robbing a bank with very high security measures, in the middle of the day, without a weapon, or the idiot who tried stealing his two thousand pound melmetal. Alone. With his own two hands. All of it was kind of ridiculous, and Ash understood the many cups of coffee piling on Lance's desk.
"Goh," Ash murmured to the boy asleep on the couch. "It's time to go home."
Pikachu and Raboot cheered and got on their partner's shoulders. After checking if Lance was really sleeping in his room, he packed up, stole all of Lance's coffee, and went back to the laboratory.
Today was a long day.
Group Chat: Champions
Ash: Agatha make sure that Lance sleeps, or I'm gonna have to live there and make sure myself
Agatha: I've been trying! I swear I've caught him hiding his work under his pillow and does it when we aren't looking
Ash: Use your cane if you need to
Agatha: Yes good idea
