Notes: I hope nobody is expecting anything grand from me at this point. I mean, when was the last time I wrote something that had an actual plot? Still, feel free to pelt me with rocks as you see fit.
Notes 2: With any luck I'll be able to wrap this up before Christmas, but don't hold your breath.
"So, what's gotten your poké balls in such disarray?"
Silver squints at him in confusion. "What?"
Gold shakes his head, snickering, because this guy, seriously.
"I mean," he enunciates carefully, "What happened to you? Why are you so distraught?"
"I'm not distraught," Silver says reflexively.
Gold pinches the bridge of his nose. "Okay, we need to talk. You probably think all this defensiveness and austerity is super cute or something, but let me tell you, it's getting kind of old, and I've only met you like two days ago."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Silver looks at Gold as though he's the crazy person.
"Ugh," Gold groans, nerves shot. (He would have chosen a more eloquent manner of retaliation had it not been half past three in the morning.) "Just. Tell me what's going on."
Silver inhales deeply, and his face becomes very dramatic. Gold half-expects violins to start playing.
"There's this —" He stops and his eyes go big like he's just now figured out how insane this whole setup is. He bites his lip and soldiers on, anyway. "In Team Rocket there's this rule: the successor of the organization has to complete a job on their own, or they can't become the leader. Kind of like an initiation rite —"
"I'm your job," Gold cuts him off, and suddenly all of this makes a lot more sense.
"Yes," Silver affirms. "But it's only that easy in theory. With every new generation, there is always someone who's trying to revolt and become the boss themselves."
"So what, some thugs signed me up as your initiation mission, figuring you'd fuck up, which you did so far, by the way, but when you refused to go back and admit to your loss, they sent an assassination squad to putsch you out of their way?" Credit where credit is due, Gold does not laugh. Much. In his defense, this is some serious Law & Order bullshit right there.
"Are you going to help me or not?"
Gold huffs. "What am I supposed to do? Break into the team's HQ and snipe everyone who opposes you? I'm not a superhero, Silver. I'm not even an anti-hero. I'm no hero at all. I just do what I have to in order to survive."
"Fine," says Silver impatiently. "If you help me, I'll leave you and your trades alone, and you can do whatever you want. Deal?"
Gold's face lights up like the local strip club has just extended its business to 24 hours a day. "You do know how to bargain," he marvels, just a tiny bit condescending. "Too bad the costs still outweigh the reward. I'd risk my life helping you go against Team Rocket's executives. If you want to bait me, you have to do a little better than that."
"You asshole!" Silver screams. "Why is everything a fucking game to you? Do you get off on playing with people and getting them to do what you want? Is that it?"
Gold sighs. "Are we really doing this black and white crap? Because I've about had it with your judgment of my life choices. As much as I sympathize with you, I can't save every damsel in distress that walks into my bar, especially when saving them puts me in mortal danger." As an afterthought, "Don't tell me you wouldn't do the same if the situation were reversed."
Silver looks like he just took a punch to the gut. "What do you want?" he asks, voice tight.
Gold hesitates. No matter if the guy's lying or not, his despair is real. "Lugia, you really have no idea what you're doing, do you?"
"How should I?" Silver growls. "I come back from Johto, and suddenly my father gets shot, and everyone wants me dead! So no, I don't know what I'm doing."
It's a veritable feat to make Gold feel like an absolute dick within 30 seconds, but Silver's got it down to an art. (Crystal would laugh her ass off about it, he thinks absentmindedly.)
"You've never done this before? No raids, no smuggling, no mugging? Nothing?"
"I was a pokémon trainer," Silver replies frostily.
"Oh", breathes Gold, and that's all either of them say for a while.
While Silver appears to be perfecting his Glare of Doom, Gold wrecks his brain figuring out what to do next. Because he has to do something. Silver has robbed him of any opportunity to bullshit himself out of this. (Another skill Crystal would probably find hysterical.)
"I guess I can help you," he eventually settles on saying, attempting to sound casually haughty.
"Good," Silver says.
"Because I pity you," Gold adds.
"Okay," Silver says.
"Also I want money."
Silver rolls his eyes. "Whatever."
"And protection from rivaling groups."
"Don't push it," Silver threatens, but it lacks real hostility. Gold glances at the clock. It's a quarter to four.
"Let's go to bed," he proposes, bends forward and stretches lazily. "We can discuss the details tomorrow."
Silver scrutinizes him. "Do you mean it?"
Gold wonders about that, too. "Sure," he replies easily, but the intensity of Silver's eyes strangles the syllable a little.
Appeased, Silver's posture loosens a bit. Without the scowl and worry carved into his face, he looks startlingly young. Gold thinks about how it must be to completely change who you are like this, from one second to the next. What kind of person Silver was before his heritage forced him into this game of death, lies and horribly designed uniforms. How he would have reacted if he'd met Gold then and not now.
"Do you have a couch?"
"What?" Gold says, dazed. "Oh, uh, of course. Do you … I — I'll get you a blanket."
Silver watches quizzically as Gold hurries out of the room.
x
"You're keeping him?" Crystal's voice is high with incredulity. To her credit, this whole thing is pretty crazy. Not to mention borderline suicidal, regarding what they're up against.
"He's not my pet," Gold protests weakly.
Crystal looks doubtful. "Why are you doing this then?"
"I —" Gold licks his lips. "I'm sort of out of options."
"So you fucked him," Crystal concludes and starts cackling. "Does he think you're boyfriends now?"
"What," Gold chokes and clears his throat. "No. No, I did not fuck him. Why would I do that?"
Crystal gives him a flat look, not even bothering to dignify that with a response.
Gold scoffs. "Have you looked at him? He's like this giant jumble of neuroses, angst and ridiculous hair. He's not even remotely within my sphere of interest."
"Oh my Arceus. You like him."
And then everything goes to shit because she's right.
x
Okay, so. Maybe he can sweat this out, like a really bad, preposterous fever. He'll screw Silver, get the whole thing out of his system and move on. After all, Silver is just some scrawny, angry teenager with a stupidly tragic backstory and terrible judgment and an intoxicating disposition to push all of Gold's buttons (the wrong and the right ones), and oh dear Lugia, Gold is so fucked.
x
Approximately one hour after the emergence of Gold's emotional crisis, Silver, the involuntary (and unknowing) initiator of said crisis, enters the kitchen where Gold is currently trying his best not to imagine all the things he'd like to do to Silver's sleep-soft face.
"Coffee?" Silver mumbles, bleary-eyed.
Grateful for the distraction, Gold gets up to brew him a cup. "Sleep well?" he asks as he reaches into the top drawer for one of the better mugs.
"Grngnh," Silver says and slumps down on the nearest chair.
Well, apparently there is one thing they have in common.
x
"What are we going to do now? Any big plans?" Gold inquires at Silver's second helping of coffee.
Silver's expression hardens. (Gold is tempted to dub it his war face.) "We have no choice but to make the next move and attack before Archer finds out where I am."
"Attack?" Gold repeats. "Directly? Are you actually retarded?"
Silver shoots him a sour look, and that really shouldn't be as hot as it is. "Do you have a better idea, Mr. Criminal Mastermind?"
"Isn't there a way to get to Archer without throwing ourselves at hundreds of well-armed, homicidal Rockets?" Gold retorts and rolls his eyes at how Silver's mouth snaps into a tight line.
"We would need uniforms and IDs to disguise ourselves and get inside the HQ," Silver answers icily, trying to gloss over his wounded pride with extra contempt.
Gold leans back in his chair, unimpressed. "I'll ask Crystal to take care of that later. In the meantime, you can draw me a rough plan of the building."
"Crystal?" Silver asks, skeptic. "I thought she was just the barmaid."
Gold laughs, ruffles Silver's hair — mostly to placate his obscene, nagging need to touch him — and uses the ensuing tirade to steal the rest of Silver's coffee.
x
The two spend the remainder of the day crouching over a large scroll of paper on which Silver reconstructs most of his knowledge about the HQ. At one point around noon, Crystal pops in to see what they're doing and receives the task to find uniforms and IDs for their mission, which she grudgingly (and with a few jabs at Gold's exceptional incompetence and laziness) accepts.
It's nearly dusk when Silver has finished mapping all the secret passages and mechanisms that, Gold is convinced, Giovanni probably only installed to fuck with his subordinates.
"Wow," he whispers, staring at their handiwork. "This thing is kind of a bitch."
"You don't say," Silver chuckles. It's an earthy, melodic sound that Gold wants to lock away to a place where only he can listen to it. This thought doesn't startle him as much as he would be comfortable with.
"Hey," he says haphazardly, voice strangled. "How about dinner? I'm starving."
"Good idea," Silver says eagerly, and Gold takes the chance and makes a beeline for the kitchen, almost knocking over one of Crystal's numerous pictures of her and her pokémon.
Silver yells after him, but the words parse as garbled nonsense through the blood pounding in Gold's ears.
x
Crystal isn't back by the time Gold has successfully managed to fix something with the scarce leftovers that have survived his rogue appetite and Crystal's midnight raids, so he doesn't bother to set the proper dining table. As much as he wants to bend Silver over it, the prospect of that actually happening is too low to go through the effort. Thus, he lays the necessities on the kitchen table and calls for Silver, who's been holed up in the living room, making faces at the floor.
Dinner is a quiet affair as Gold is basically hiding in his plate and Silver is purposefully ignoring Gold's very existence.
Maybe he shouldn't have run off like that, Gold muses later while gathering the dishes. Still in thought, he turns around to put the pile into the dishwasher, promptly bumping into Silver, and drops everything. He curses and perches down to clean up the mess. He doesn't register that Silver has done the same until their hands touch, attempting to pick up the same piece of dirty porcelain. Gold flinches and pulls away. Silver's hand was warm and paradoxically familiar, not at all how he expected it to be.
"What the hell is your problem?" Silver's gaze is glued to Gold's hand. "Why are you suddenly acting like I have the plague?"
In that moment Crystal bursts into the room, from the shoulder downward covered in blood.